


Hadopelagia

by RC_McLachlan



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chuunin Exams, Gratuitous Misuse of Mythology, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-02-22 10:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2505263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/pseuds/RC_McLachlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A forgotten sea gives birth to a continuation at the tattered edge of all things. </p><p>(Or, why "Umino Iruka" is a very odd name for a child in Fire Country.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Continuation

**Author's Note:**

> Someone mentioned Naruto on tumblr the other day, and I thought, "I've never seen it, despite it being super popular when I was in college. Let's watch the first episode and see if it lives up to the hype." By the time I hit episode 81 in, like, two days, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. As I type this, I'm on episode 216. This stupid show is ruining my life. I'm 27—it's too late for me to start getting into an anime I didn't watch on Toonami when I was young (you'll have to pry my nostalgic love for DBZ, Sailor Moon, and Gundam Wing from my cold, dead fingers).
> 
> Regardless, that dumb fox kid and his ilk seem to have inspired something in me, as the idea for this story has yet to let me go. I'm taking a lot of liberties with the canon, but bear with me. Here's hoping I even finish it. 
> 
> Note: This is unbeta'd, because I know precisely _zero_ people in the Naruto fandom and I didn't feel like bothering my usual betas (who have no idea how to even pronounce 'Naruto,' let alone what it's about). Feel free to point out any mistakes—grammatical or otherwise. I'm sure this stupid thing is riddled with them.

  
  
**"The cure for anything is saltwater—sweat, tears, or the sea." – Isak Dinesen, author**

 

She gives birth at the tattered edge of all things, in the little beach house a good man's great-grandfather built on a record-breaking hot day centuries ago.

Hours pass as she fights through a new kind of pain—and she had such plans for the afterward, the period where she happily dealt with nighttime feedings and diaper changes, and all the while she would spend hours with the shards of this memory—when the far wall of the room bursts in, a storm of white plaster and old wood. It is a reminder that her dreams are just that, and reality never knocks before it intrudes.

The baby in her arms screams at the noise, and that his first living minutes are terrifying is both beautiful and tragic. Sighing, she tucks his small, soft head to her breast, swollen with milk, and whispers words not meant for his ears. The baby calms somewhat, whimpering and clutching at her skin, and outside the window comes the roar of the waves.

Sighing, and with great care, she eases up to sit at the edge of the bed, feet slowly sliding to rest firmly upon the floor like a foregone conclusion, and the pain that arcs through her abdomen is incredible and utterly wretched and wonderfully new. Her hold tightens on the baby, who murmurs at the feel of it, and it is as if her body is not her own. Which, of course, is absurd. Her body is no one's but hers—the skin she wears was not something she had taken in the night like others do; there were no pretty words or promises to men who had made their homes in bars, or to women that needed a change in their life, or hymns to those in temples and towers to prove her authenticity. There were no offerings made in her name, and no pretty cloak of hers was stolen and hidden to tether her here. She had carefully built herself from the ground up—sand and shell and seawater and bone—into a dream made real. She has more than earned the sartorial ideal she wears. Every complaint issued by a nerve ending, every irritated trigger point, every muscle twinge brings a flash of a grateful smile to her face, and she presses her nose against the algae-soft hair of her favorite creation, wet with amnion and smelling sharply of rot and oxidization and salt, and oh, it's lovely. Her boy smells like the sea.

Slowly, shifting the child to rest his cheek against the safe haven between her neck and shoulder, she shuffles toward the window, dancing slowly around the detritus.

Beyond the place where the wall used to be is a long, haunting melody, a drawn-out note that hangs heavy in the air. After a moment, it is joined by two others, great and gentle singers with the grace of waves imbued into their spines, and she hums with them, _one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three_ , until they become one. Her feet, solid, sturdy things, keep time, a pursuit waltz that she whispers into soft, dark hair, " _One-two-three, one-two-three, do-re-mi, on-the-sea_ ," until they are able to dance around the room.

She hears the faint susurrus of movement behind her, and the baby stirs against her at the sound.

"This is the last of the good houses," she says, and continues to dance. "A good man's father's father's father built it with his own hands, you know, right from the salt and sand. He took the rocks and the shells and the love that had been given to him by his family and made a house in which he could invoke my name and I would answer. They don't make houses like this anymore."

Her feet slow and the song ends as the whales drift away for parts unknown. She can't see her reflection in the broken glass that hangs onto what is left of the wall, but she sees the child's, and it is if he is curled around the entirety of the sea.

She smiles. "I've always wanted to die in a house like this." A pause, and then, "You're late."

There comes the sound of a thousand storms rocking the sky, and then, **YOU COULD NOT HAVE KNOWN WHEN TO EXPECT ME**.

"No," she agrees. "But you're later than I imagined you would be."

**THE CHILD.**

"Is wonderful." It comes out as a blissful breath, and she can't help but look away from the billions of grains of sand that lay just beyond the house to the parcel in her arms. Beautiful, beautiful thing, a world within a world within a world.

After a moment, two moments, and how does anyone ever get anything done when there are amazing things like her son that need to be looked at, she turns around.

It's not killing intent that hits her, but it feels like it, like looking into a mirror except the reflection cannot be borne, and the air in her lungs punches out of her to see it with her human eyes. The void beyond the edge of the earth fills with blue-green-gray-black, with storms and dark things that lurk in the depths, and she plunges into it headfirst, into the cold that presses against her skin, because it knows her, because it loves her in a way no one has in years and years and years.

Her boy lets out a soft whimper, enough to reel her back in, and she inhales the air gratefully before turning to face it fully.

It has taken form now, resplendent in armor that no longer has any place in this world. It's been a long time since she's worn it, but she knows the gleam of it as it catches the light. It stands before her as a man she has never met, his crown brushing against the ceiling and disturbing the old wood, and he's so very thin, practically skeletal. It takes so much to contain them within flesh and carbon; his skin has caved in, gaunt and stretched tight over bone, and soon the body he's borrowed will be unable to sustain him. Her attempts to catch his gaze are thwarted by the gossamer that shields his eyes, but the many, many eyes in his skin are all open and fixed on her boy.

They're always fixed on the children, for children are mysteries the way dark matter is a mystery—utterly known and everywhere, and yet none know quite what to do with it. Children are bright, brilliant things with laughter like the first wave that touched the shore and a capacity for such great things, and while the old ones do not understand a thing about them, they protect them all the same. She used to sit in parks, in villages, on beaches and in playgrounds, and watch them run, spin, jump, sing, hop, and feel a distant sort of affection. They were, after all, the best creation; little masterpieces in sweaters and small shoes.

But now, wrapped in skin that is her own, she sees them and wonders at ever thinking them perfect. They're not. They're loud, sticky creatures, and they stumble and scream and are slow, and she loves them so. They aren't masterpieces, but beginnings, and all beginnings are small and completely overwhelming. And one night, nine months ago, she left a small lagoon, having spent hours watching little hands plunge into tide pools with envy for jellyfish and sand stars while proud parents watched on, went home to her apartment, her _wonderful, imperfect_ apartment—made so because it was all hers—and whispered, "I want one. I want a beginning of my own, but more than that I want a continuation."

Her continuation huffs against her throat and lets out a low whine. A few feet away, the thin fingers on a too-long hand twitch in response, but otherwise do not move. He stands as if rooted to the ground, part of the house built by a good man's great-grandfather, and she remembers what they both used to be.

"You visited me so many times the first few weeks," she says. "I couldn't sleep for the noise—music, people talking, breathing, and you would sit with me until the sun came over the horizon and I could hear myself again. And every time you asked me why I stayed. Do you remember what I said?"

**THAT TO BE IMPERFECT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO ONCE AGAIN COURT THE ATTENTION OF THOSE WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN US.**

"I was wrong. The time of the old gods is over."

Her name is Nanami, but it wasn't always, and she was thirty-one years old the day of her birth. She has not attended school a day in her life, she does not have a favorite food because she loves them all, and she is quite enamored with a house built in centuries ago by a man whose name Time has long-since forgotten—barely a blip to her. She is not married, has never known the touch of another, and she has a son.

But once, she was grand, with many shining scales and sway over every ocean.

"He will be cared for by a nin couple who has been unable to conceive—far from here, in the village that smells of leaves and smoke. They have agreed to take my name so that he may keep his. He will not be found in such a clever hiding spot."

**AND YOUR TEMPLE? YOUR FOLLOWERS?**

Ah, her temple—a humble construct of shell and stone, dutifully tended to by young and old hands, the stories of her grandeur and power passed down through blood and breath. On the stormiest nights when the mothers and fathers of the small clan near the White Cove would wrap their little ones in blankets and furs, she would watch them from the shadows cast by the pillars they erected in homage to the strength that her very name invoked. She would even curl up with their young and keep them safe from the waves that crashed against the rocks and threatened their very livelihood. Unfailingly loyal, those men and women, bestowing each generation with names that she was proud of, taken from the very creatures she made real.

The children of the Umino clan are formidable, for they are her representatives on this mortal earth.

"To honor their loyalty, I have given them the sea with which to arm themselves. The Fire is burning, my dear, and it grows ever larger day by day—it means to strike this world with the very shields and swords sworn to protect it, and I will see the Umino children prepared for such a war. Someday," she nuzzles into baby-fine, dark hair, "he of my blood and heart will lead them."

**HE WILL TEAR THIS WORLD APART IN SEARCH OF THE CHILD. WHY RISK AN HEIR AT ALL?**

It would be a lie to say the question hasn't plagued her from the moment she took a handful of seawater and pressed it into her womb. It stole many of her nights, forced a resolution from her eons before she was ever ready, until she woke the day an entire new life emerged from her. Her heart is steadfast in its answer, but her tongue falters slightly as she whispers, "I love this world, and I wanted to leave a real continuation of myself here after I was gone. Selfishness; I have no other excuse than I was human at the time."

She turns away from the window and finds the gossamer no longer hides his eyes. She stares into them, unafraid, and feels something shift within her. It takes her a long moment to recognize it as regret. "I only wish I could have seen them. Could have seen _him_. My legacy will be great."

**OUR WORLDS WERE NOT MEANT TO MERGE.**

"No," she agrees, but can't help the smile that breaks over her face. "But in this case, I am happy to make an exception. I have birthed a miracle, and now I will return home."

**YOU COULD SEAL YOURSELF INTO HIM.**

Nanami reaches down and tickles her boy's belly, laughing a little as he squirms, and is tempted to carve her name into an arc around it. She could be with him always. But then she thinks of old friends— _Kaguya, Juubi_ —and knows what becomes of those who are locked away.

"I would not make him into a prison; no one deserves such a fate, least of all him."

**HAVE YOU ISSUED THE CHILD A NAME?**

"Names have little power these days," Nanami says absently, then regards her boy for a long moment. His perfect lashes part and he gazes up at her with eyes the color of calm waters. _Hide them, and only bring them out when you need to see beyond what you see._ Her fingers brush his lids, and when he looks at her again his eyes are like the night. "Do you remember the small beasts we spun into being, at the beginning? Mine were the first and perhaps the most perfect, as they carried the best of us—our intelligence, our speed, our joy. They would jump as if they were trying to touch Heaven, and how we would weep, for there was no stopping the progress that would come once we departed this world. … Iruka, I think. Umino Iruka, the clever child of many oceans. It is a good name, in a world that has no more use for such things."

Iruka murmurs at her, and she blinks back tears as she touches a finger to the soft swell of his right cheek and drags it slowly over the bridge of his nose to the left. The path over his skin dips suddenly, painlessly, sand bowing to the majesty of a wave, and sits as an innocuous scar. It will grow as he does, and he will bear her mark, now and forever; the last bit of herself she can possibly give.

"Never turn your back on the sea," she whispers, "and it will come when you call."

No matter how prepared she thought herself for the weight of him to become unfamiliar in her arms, a gull's cry of despair escapes her as Iruka dissolves into foam, washing from her to soak in the love of a stranger, a woman who is and is not his mother. Her head tips into her bare hands and she allows herself a moment to weep for the boy and man she will never know.

_Never turn your back on the sea, for it is my gift to you._

**IT IS TIME TO LEAVE THIS PLACE, WATATSUMI. WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.**

Moments later, she is on the floor, slit from chin to cunt, and her hands shake as she tries to keep her intestines where they belong, but blood makes for a poor hold, and there is so very much of it. Part of her—the old part—laughs off such devastation and slips from the ruins of her body, erupting triumphantly into the spaces between the horizon, the perfect amalgam of water and wind and power and sound, and disappearing from this terrifying new world for good.

The other part, now empty of the god she clung to, bleeds out over a good man's great-grandfather's floor in the last of the good houses, and dies alone.


	2. Jump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umino Iruka is brave. And a little bit stupid. Mostly brave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I re-wrote this damn chapter, like, 19 times. What started as a cursory introduction between two characters morphed into... ridiculousness. Oops.

"I thought you were brave."

He once ran in the direction of a demon fox without any regard for his safety—even if his father hadn't whispered _you're so brave_ into his ear before throwing his own life upon a funeral pyre lit with nine, writhing flames, Iruka would have known it anyway.

"Don’t you remember the time I set exploding paint tags in the Hokage's office?" Iruka demands, because it had been a thing of true beauty and was all anyone could talk about for weeks, and if they've forgotten about it he's going to be very angry. "I even framed Anko for it—and it _worked._ And she didn’t kill me! I'm brave. Like, super brave. Braver than the lot of you put together, and probably the Hokage. What I'm _not_ is stupid."

"It's not _stupid_. It's a test."

"No, it really is stupid."

"Umino, stop being such a baby." It's one of the other boys who says it, someone from another class with droopy eyes and jowls. The two girls standing by snicker to each other, their eyes on him and their murmurings too quiet, too pointed, to be anything but nasty. Each unintelligible word aims to be the quick slice of a well-aimed kunai, but he's been crafting his armor for years. They don't even scratch it.

"Is that supposed to make me feel bad?" Iruka asks the boy, then tilts his head. "You look like a melted candle."

"Hey!"

Hachi snorts, stepping forward. "Umino, you _said_ you wanted to hang out with us."

Actually, this whole thing started when Tamaru-sensei crashed through the classroom door and into the hallway, screaming for a medi-nin about dying from septicemia thanks to a few well-hidden tacks placed on his chair, and Bunya Hachi—all skinny limbs and effortless charm—extended an invitation. _Pretty brave to do that where he couldn't see you, aren't you? Wanna test it after school?_

Iruka turns his head a little, enough to catch sight of the strong stitching on Hachi's jacket, the warm wool that lines the collar of the coat one of the girls wears. Probably gifts from their parents, rewards for doing well in school, or maybe just because those are the things parents get their kids for no other reason than it's cold.

Iruka hunches his shoulders a little. "I just don't get why I've got to do _this_."

"Well, the only way we'll know if a chakra-dead loser like you is cool enough to be part of our group is if you jump."

Iruka bristles. "I'm not chakra-dead!"

"Aren't you? Mizuki said you've never been able to do a jutsu."

"Mizuki said—?” But the words are lost on the wind that scrapes at his cheeks and pulls at his hair, uncomfortably dry and almost biting with its promise of snow. He's made it through enough winters in Konoha to know he won't last another if he doesn't do something about his stupid coat. He'll have to somehow scrounge up the money for a warmer one, or maybe if he does some odd jobs for old lady Kyoko she'll patch up the one he has—that is, if she's forgotten about that time with her cat and the wax.

“Where is Mizuki?”

And when did Mizuki start talking to Hachi about anything? Mizuki hates many things—miso ramen, fireworks, and history class—but nothing as much as Bunya Hachi. They’ve spent countless afternoons on the Academy roof, watching the clouds and pretending to see impossible weapons in them, things they’d use as Hokage someday, and somehow Mizuki would weave a new reason to hate Hachi into the conversation. _I’d never be friends with him; everyone loves him and he doesn’t deserve it. I hate him. If he says so much as “hello” to me, I’m going to punch him through a wall._

Iruka isn’t sure when that changed.

He’s knocked from his thoughts when someone pushes him hard from behind, and he feels the intent in it as he stumbles, catching himself just before he topples over the edge. Sand and rocks make the leap instead, disappearing from sight with a sound that is quieter than suicide ought to be.

His stomach pulls tight and for a moment the world seems to swim. Nausea crackles up his jaw, sour and sweet, and his mouth fills with saliva and a very pointed threat. He just barely chokes it down. There is no way he's going to puke in front of Bunya Hachi and everyone else; they'd never let him hear the end of it. Mizuki would carve it into the Memorial Stone next to his name— _Umino Iruka: The only fifteen-year old, chakra-dead genin to blow chunks over every single Hokage in one go_.

"Come on, Umino, don't wuss out." There's an ugliness to the words that sets Iruka's teeth on edge.

"I'm not wussing out, Hachi!" He snarls, and his heart pounds against his ribs with every intention of breaking them. It takes all his willpower not to punt Hachi's stupid ass off the dumb mountain instead. "But jeez, I could've gone right over!"

"That's the point, moron. You need to jump past the Third's chin; any ninja worth their salt could do it. We've all done it—right, you guys? It's how you become friends with us."

"Hachi-kun, maybe this isn't such a great idea," Melted Candle pipes up, cowering slightly when Hachi rounds on him. "What if he really _is_ chakra-dead? He won't be able to get to the rocks if—"

"Shut up! Or do _you_ want to do it instead?"

The sheer novelty of being acknowledged by someone as popular as Bunya Hachi had made his tongue quick to act when he agreed to meet Hachi at the Monument. Finally, someone saw something worthwhile in him, something more than clever pranks and loud, raucous laughter. Hachi saw the way Iruka never seemed to need to study for his genjutsu classes; the appreciation he had for history; the foundation of his sharp, strategic mind upon which his penchant for tricks stood proud. He was Umino Iruka, more than the sum of his failures and abandonment issues, and he was finally _seen_ by someone that mattered.

He should've known.

"You'll be fine, Umino. If you need help, one of us will totally come after you." Hachi's snarl melts into a smile, too-wide and full of teeth, and Iruka swallows hard.

_Liars. Charlatans. They are not your friends. They want to see you fail._

The thought rises up, unbidden, and he sends it down to live with the vomit he absolutely won't let out. No. No, they wouldn't do something like this. They're ninja—it goes against everything their parents, their teachers, their Hokage has taught. It's just a prank. Perhaps a bit scarier than the kind Iruka plays, but not so different. They went to the trouble of bringing him here; they wouldn't actually make him jump from this kind of height knowing that he wouldn't be able to jutsu his way to safety. No one, not even Bunya Hachi and his crew, is that cruel.

"Don't think you can do it?"

_Of course you can._

"Of course I can," Iruka echoes in agreement, then turns his attention to Hachi, who frowns with the air of one who's never experienced backtalk. "This is nothing. I've jumped from way higher than this during the Chuunin Exam."

"Didn't you fail that? Twice?"

"You did, too," Iruka says, and whatever is on his face makes something hateful spark in Hachi's eyes—now dark, almost entirely all pupil. "I'll take whatever you dish out, _Bunya_."

_You are strong, because I am of your mother and your mother was strong._

"Well, go on, then," Bunya says, smiling with all his teeth. "Jump, and you're in the group."

_Feel no fear and you will know the smell of triumph—salt and air and pain._

Iruka's calves ache with tension, the intent to spring forward writing itself into his tendons, encoding itself into his cells, and he has to gulp in a few breaths to stop himself from just doing it. It would be easy, so very easy to just take a running leap right off the heads of their leaders, to put himself in front of their fixed gazes and just fall. Anyone can fall, but none are more versed in the art than he—Iruka's dragged his family name down about as far as it can go.

_You would not fall so far._

The Hokage Monument is the highest thing in the entire village.

"I could just fall," he whispers, turning to face the edge.

"What are you waiting for, dead-last?" Bunya shouts, and Iruka hates him. Hates the way everyone loves him when he doesn't deserve it. Wants to turn around and let him feel the power of his rage, wants to—

_Wash him away._

"I'm not waiting for anything," Iruka hears himself say, mouth pulling into a grin so wide that his cheeks hurt and his eyes water.

_Fall, and I will catch you._

His right foot trembles only a little as he lifts it—

_Never turn your back, and I will always catch you._

Leans forward and—

_Because I am yours._

—chokes as the air in his lungs punches out of him leaving him reeling because the void beyond the edge fills with blue green gray black with storms and dark things that lurk in the depths and he plunges into it headfirst into the cold seeping through his threadbare jacket and worn pants to press against his skin as if it knows him as if it loves him the way no one has in years and years and years moving to envelope him so utterly completely embraced and the lines that make up his body his mind his everything blur into this vast terrifyingly familiar force that tastes like forever and smells like salt and forces its way inside invades his lungs his organs his blood is brackish and his brain is soaking and his cells his cells his cells expand and explode and someone is screaming above him below him around him there is the haunting long note of something so much bigger than he is the chatter of a group that calls him their own the many-armed embrace of family the dark shadow of danger and he's drifting he's falling he's _drowning_ —

He tries to step back, to run, but he's swept up in it, this living endlessness that is older than the sky above, than the stone below, and it burrows so deep that he can't feel anything else inside of himself except its all-encompassing power. It leaks from his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and even as he chokes and struggles and fears it loves him so very much.

_They call you names, as if their hateful tongues deserve to address you at all. I would see the ridicule flow into fear and respect._

Slowly, the fight leaves him, and he can do little else but give himself to it. Iruka can feel its pleasure, its terrible adoration, and it rocks him as if he were its own child.

_I am your blood, and my will is yours, for you bear the name your mother gave you. I reside in many, but I sang only for her._

A long, sweet note slips around him, mournful and beautiful both, and he closes his eyes, listening, humming under the phantom touch of a gentle touch sweeping across the bridge of his nose, tracing the strip of his scar. She used to sing on the nights when the shadows seemed extra scary and dawn was an eternity away.

No, she didn’t. His mother never sang—

_I was both her ebb and flow, but you…_

It rears up with a deafening roar, so immense that it blocks out the sky. It has no beginning, no end, but is both. He stares up at it, stares down at it, and everything he has ever been until this moment dissolves. He tries to cry out, call out for help, but the words stream from his lips and are lost. There is no saving him from this.

_You will be the whole of her._

He sees himself pitch forward, arms outstretched, palms open, and it sluices down his shoulders, kisses at his elbows, and pours forth like what he imagines chakra to be, but it's not. It's nothing the world has ever seen, and he watches, soaring in the sky, held by trillions and trillions of little hands, as Konoha bends beneath a will that is his to wield, set adrift in a wave of blood and power and aphotic intent.

_Let me into your limbs, your blood, your mantle, and together we will wash your pain from this flawed earth._

Yes.

_Yes?_

And the day will dawn to find those who doubted him, pitied him, and left him behind to the shadows scraping for his favor, proclaiming their love and loyalty, and he would see them drown in the crest of his power. It clamors for him to join it and instead he _becomes_ it, and together they rise above the dust and the doubt.

_All you must do is release me._

They lift their hand, fingers outstretched as if to touch the entirety of Konoha, and they open their mouth to answer—

"Don't."

_Release me!_

"I can only help you if I can find you. Don't go where I can't follow."

Gasping, clawing his way back to the surface, Iruka whispers, " _No._ "

The song breaks over him like a wave, echoing faintly as it dissipates, and the vastness releases him with a grumble, distant thunder over faraway lands. Iruka sinks to his knees, panting, trembling in his too-thin jacket, and stares out from the edge of the Monument to where his village sprawls out elegantly, untouched.

He brings his hand up and stares at his palm, bone dry, the muscles twitching with an overload of adrenaline, and he can't stop the raw, painful gasps that escape him. He feels so small, and his skin is stretched uncomfortably over his bones. Every shallow breath he drags in threatens to split him at the seams. It's familiarity of every night he's spent alone in his apartment, defenseless and hurting in the dark, missing his mother and father the way he would his own limbs.

If that's the case, then all he has to do is wait for dawn. The sun will bring the comfort of a new day, a beginning, a kinder continuation.

He curls his arms around his shins and rests his forehead upon his knees. It's fine. Everything's fine. It was all…

_I will wait._

It wasn't real.

"You with me?"

"I don't know," Iruka whispers, then startles. Heart pounding, he turns and sees the armor-cut figure of an ANBU standing alone, the white of the mask curved elegantly to hide their face, the painted lines of the hound's snout frozen in a rictus of macabre amusement. Shakily, he scrambles to his feet. "Uh—"

“Tilt your head back for me.”

 _Obey ANBU in all respects._ It’s a treatise to be followed in every situation, taught from the moment one can walk or speak. The grass is green, the sky is blue, and ANBU protect the village for any and all threats. If an ANBU member asks for something, you give it to the best of your ability, no questions. There are many problems inherent with that sort of blind submission, places where absolute power can corrupt—and probably has.

But Iruka is not stupid, so he tilts his head back.

“Look at me. Look in my eyes.”

Swallowing, he makes himself stare into the blanked-out holes of the hound’s eyes. A faint hint of movement lurks behind them, but the shadows prevent him from even catching the shape of the ANBU’s eyes, the color. ANBU masks are brilliant screens.

“Is—What are you—”

“What color are your eyes normally?”

“Black,” Iruka answers immediately. It’s an easy answer to give; it’s never not been true.

“Are you sure?”

Iruka breathes through his nose, ignoring the pained complaints in his legs and back, and says, “Yes. They’re black. Why? Is there… is something wrong?”

“For a second, it looked like…”

There’s no whisper of feet on the ground, no displacement of air, but the ANBU is suddenly right in front of him, so close that the red whorls in the mask are burning their pattern into his retinas.

“All right, you can relax. You’re fine.”

Exhaling, Iruka tilts his head down and forces his muscles to unclench. The ANBU takes a soundless step back.

“Am I in trouble? Are you—Are you on a mission?” What could he have possibly done to warrant a visit by an ANBU? Surely a couple of tacks on a chair isn’t enough to brand him a threat to the village.

"Hm? No. I was passing through, and it looked as if there were a… situation," the ANBU says, and if Iruka had to make a guess at the tone he'd say it was bored. "You were hyperventilating. Your friends decided to leave you to it."

Iruka spits at the ground. "They're _not_ my friends."

They're even less than not-friends—now they're targets. He hopes Bunya and the rest of them are prepared for the ungodly firestorm of revenge that he's going to rain down upon them.

"Oh, good. Because I was going to tell you to get some new ones."

"Uh, right."

The ANBU hums, a rush of air caught by the mask. Iruka has no idea where the ANBU is actually looking. "I suppose I could just make them disappear, if you want. No one would ever find the bodies."

Iruka stares. "Are you volunteering to murder someone for me?"

"It was just a suggestion," the ANBU says airily. "No need to take that tone."

"There's a need when you threaten my friends."

"I thought they weren't your friends." There's a smile in the words, audible, and it makes Iruka grin.

"They're not, but that doesn't mean they deserve to _die_."

"Are you sure?" In a certain light, the red mouth of the hound looks as though it’s curved up slightly, and the playful thread that winds around the words wraps around Iruka, strengthening the stitching in his old coat and leaving him almost too warm.

"Pretty sure, yeah. They _did_ try to make me jump off a mountain, though, so they do deserve _something_. A good scare. Can you be scary, Hound-san? I mean, the mask alone…"

"I can be _terrifying_ when the situation calls for it," Hound agrees. "And there are many shadows and noises in a house at night that can be used. I wouldn't even need to touch them to make them wet their pants."

It startles a laugh out of Iruka, who has never been able to resist a good prank as long as he's been alive. He's never thought to try and trick someone in their own home. It's an inspired cruelty he can't help but admire. "Have you played a trick like that before?"

"Yep." Hound shifts his weight onto his left leg and waves his hand through the air. Even though it's a careless gesture, it's the most elegant thing Iruka has ever seen. People have died by that hand.

Iruka wants to see it more than he’s wanted anything in his life, wants to curl close to black armor and pale skin and watch from the shadows as Bunya and his stupid friends learn their lesson. Hound has a really nice voice; he probably has an even nicer laugh—low and smoky, a sliver of light that would find a very nice home in Iruka's ears.

"Well, no one actually lived to talk about it afterward, but I could modify it for you, I s'pose."

"That’s… uh, nice of you," Iruka says, and then laughs. He holds out a hand. There’s dirt under his nails; he'd be ashamed of it if he didn't suspect something worse lurks under Hound’s. "Umino Iruka."

Hound pauses, and for a horrible moment Iruka thinks the still line of his shoulders is masking killing intent, but then Iruka’s hand is taken with a wary hesitance, as if it’s been a long time since someone offered their hand. Hound's grip is firm, softened somewhat by the leather of his gloves, and he shakes Iruka's hand slowly.

"It’s okay. I know you can't tell me your name," Iruka says.

"I wouldn't be a very good ANBU if I did," comes the agreement. "So, would you have done it?"

“Done what?”

“Jumped.”

He wants to say no, wants to laugh off the cramps in his legs from where the muscles coiled and held tight in preparation for a leap. Umino Iruka is brave, but he’s not stupid—except when he is. Admitting to it will do nothing but disappoint Hound, who probably has never done a stupid thing in his life, not if he’s wearing the painted mask of the hound, the leader of Konoha’s own pack of legal assassins.

But he stares into the blank eyes of the hound mask and feels the lie hit the back of his teeth. “Probably.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” But he does. “Haven’t you ever wanted to be someone else? Anyone other than yourself?”

Hound says nothing for a long moment, and then, “Jumping off a mountain would make you someone else?”

Iruka makes a face; there’s no need to say it like _that_. “Normal Iruka would never have jumped.”

“Was it because of what they said?”

Iruka blinks. “What’d they say?”

"About you being chakra-dead. Is it true?"

Before Hound even finishes speaking, the denial is building up an army on Iruka's tongue, its weaponry fine-honed and hot, just off the blacksmith's fire, and all he'd need to do is open his mouth and attack. It's a campaign that has never failed and his army has become renown in the village for its strength and lack of mercy.

“You can’t just ask something like that,” Iruka manages to get out through clenched teeth.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Hound says.

Something cracks, a hard thing made of sand and shell, and the anger leaks from him until Iruka can do nothing except avert his gaze to the village below. He wants to talk about it; wants to shift the weight of his failures onto someone who can bear it, even for a little while.

"They're not entirely sure if I am. I can do some things, but... not like everyone else can." He sighs. "With my luck? I probably am."

"What's it like? Not having chakra, I mean."

He bites down on the remobilization of the terrible words on his tongue. "I don't know. What's it like being ANBU?"

"It's not all it's cracked up to be." There's an almost gentle pressure against his fingers and it takes Iruka a moment to realize his hand is still held by long fingers, the handshake stretching out into something that sets his cheeks on fire and knocks on the door of a possessive creature that is loath to let go. "Not having chakra, though… There are those who would say it's a blessing."

Iruka snorts and absently shakes their joined hands between them. "Thanks, but I don't think it matters since we live in a _ninja village_ and I need it to be a _ninja_. It doesn’t matter to them; all they see is someone who won’t make it."

The mask tilts a little and Hound releases Iruka’s hand, thumb brushing against his palm in a way that sets Iruka’s cheeks on _fire_. It’s such a little thing to get flustered over, but it’s the hint of daring behind it that makes his heart pound. No one’s ever held his hand before. He’s not sure how to get Hound to do it again.

“All right. We’ll be other people for a little while.”

“Wait, can you—ANBU aren't even allowed to talk to civilians like this.”

"Oh yeah? Know a lot of ANBU, do you?"

Iruka blinks. "I—No, you're the first, but—"

Hound drops suddenly into a sit with all the grace of a cat, legs dangling off the edge of the mountain as if it were any other day and he was anyone else, and pats the space next to him. After a moment, Iruka hunkers down beside him.

“I've got some time, and it’s what you wanted. So, who are we? Strangers? friends?”

Iruka turns to answer, but his eyes snag on the wiry build of Hound’s arms, the strong line of his shoulders and neck, the wild silver of his hair.

“I-I don’t know.” It takes him a few tries, but he manages to tear his gaze away from Hound to stare out at the village, face hot. “Yes. Yes, we’re friends.”

“Always nice to have a few of those, huh, Iruka-kun? Do I call you that? _Iruka-kun_?”

“I hate that.” Iruka pauses. “Actually, I don’t know if I hate that. No one’s ever called me that before.”

Hound’s legs swing absently to and fro, and he shrugs. “Do you _want_ to be someone who hates being called that?”

He thinks for a minute, then sits up a little straighter, alight with discovery of this new, better Iruka. “You call me Iruka-kun and I say I hate it, but I really don’t. I like it because it makes me feel important to you.”

It takes him a second to realize why Hound is snorting to himself, and by the time he finishes replaying his words back his face is bright red and a whole new army is waving the white flag on his tongue, stammering through a battlefield of denials.

“I-I didn’t mean—I _meant_ to say—The other you. The pretend you. The you who’s my friend. Wait, no, not that we're not friends—Oh god, I’m going to shut up now,” Iruka groans, burying his head into his hands. Hound is laughing. At him. This is the worst. He may as well jump off the mountain anyway.

“So, you’re someone who’s important to me, _Iruka-kun_ , and I’m…”

 _Iruka-kun_. He shivers. “You’re…?”

Sounding a little lost, Hound muses, “Huh. I don’t know. I don’t know how to be anyone else. Who should I be?”

At that, Iruka lifts his head, mortification falling away in the face of Hound’s genuine confusion. “Whoever you want.”

“That could be anyone.”

"What do you mean? Do you… Don't you like yourself?"

Hound chuckles, and it cuts every part of Iruka to hear it. "Not particularly."

"But you're ANBU!" It's unfathomable, that someone who attained such a coveted rank wouldn't be proud, would stew behind the famed mask in self-loathing. "How can you—"

"And you're genin," Hound says, reasonable, factual. Iruka hates it. His body itches to pound his regard into the space behind Hound's mask until he understands. "You're innocent. You haven't been tainted. You haven't... You shouldn't hate yourself, either. The person behind this mask has seen and done things you can't imagine, and I don't like him." 

“Well, I like you." The best part is, it's the truth. "Besides, I don’t know who you are now, so being someone else isn’t going to be a huge change for me. You can be you and I'll never know. I mean, don’t do anything that could, you know, damage your mission or anything, but why don’t you… I don’t know, do something you’ve always wanted to do. Scream how much you hate the color red. Graffiti the Monument. Kick a tree over. Hold my hand again.”

Brave. Umino Iruka is brave. And a little bit stupid. Mostly brave.

The mask tilts thoughtfully. “My hands are pretty dirty. Bloody. Sure you want to hold them?”

Heat rushes back into Iruka’s cheeks, but his eyes linger on the deceptively clean leather of Hound’s gloves. “Or don’t do any of that. Just sit here and enjoy the view—do you get to do a lot of that as ANBU?”

“I… don’t. Huh.” As if the thought of just stopping and looking around never occurred to Hound before this moment.

Triumphant, Iruka grins and sweeps his arm out over the village. “Now’s your chance.”

The silence that falls over them is comfortable, a strong and sturdy string that binds them at the wrists, and Iruka gratefully relaxes into it. His teachers, his classmates, Mizuki, the Hokage—they talk and let him fill in the spaces between their words, but the moment he stops is the moment they leave.

“You know, I don’t get to see this part of Konoha very often.” Wistfulness creeps into Hound’s tone, and Iruka has to consciously stop himself from asking about the parts of Konoha he _does_ see. “It’s so quiet up here. Bit too cold for my tastes, though.”

“Winter’ll be coming soon. Do you wear warmer things during the cold months?” Iruka eyes the parts of Hound’s shoulders not covered by the armor.

“Do you?”

The collar of Iruka’s threadbare coat doesn’t hide the angry flush that steals over his cheeks when he ducks down into it, but it does its best. “I’ll get it fixed before then.”

“Parents don’t make a lot?”

Iruka clutches at the frayed hem of his jacket. “I thought we were being other people.”

“Ah. Sorry, I didn’t realize.” Hound turns his head slightly, just enough that Iruka can see the curve of a strong chin in the shadows of the mask. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Just wondering, that’s all.”

“Sorry,” Iruka mutters, not particularly sorry at all. “I do well enough.”

“What did your parents think about you being chakra-dead?”

The army mobilizes, ready for battle. “Jeez! Would you stop asking about it? Yes, I’m a useless genin in a ninja village. What does it matter to you, anyway?”

“It was just a question,” Hound says tightly. “I didn’t mean—”

“Anything by it, I know,” Iruka finishes for him, just a little bit mean, enough to make himself feel better until the lump in his throat can be swallowed down. “Just shut up about it! You don’t need to know anything like that… unless I’m being interrogated. Am I being interrogated, _ANBU-san_?”

Because Hound can languish on the mountain with a no-name genin all he wants, but the mask is his face, the armor his skin, and no amount of pretending will change that. This whole stupid game of theirs teeters on the edge of a blade stained with the blood of who knows how many people.

The silence that follows is pointed, a hard, sharp thing that glints like a sword fresh off the whetstone. Iruka shifts, unable to get comfortable, the dirt and tiny rocks beneath him suddenly unbearable. His cheeks ache from the bite of the wind and his fingers rub together to capture any kind of warmth. He hates it.

“Look—”

“I’m… sorry.” Hound looks out over the village, maybe trying to pick out his own house, thinking of warm tea or a comfortable bed. Maybe he even has parents waiting for him. Iruka follows the line of the mask’s gaze and sees nothing. “I’m not all that good. At knowing what’s okay and what isn’t.”

“I’m someone else, remember? Just talk to me like I’m one of your friends,” Iruka grumbles, swiping at his eyes with the edge of his hand.

Hound says nothing, then offers tentatively, “I’m not good at having friends, either.”

“So we’ll just sit here and be terrible at it together.”

Whatever he’d been expecting—rejection, arrest, or worse, laughter—doesn’t come, and the space between them is filled with the cold wind that lives on the mountain, pawing at Iruka’s insufficient jacket and undulating up his spine with a soft hiss and a rattle.

But then there’s the brush of butter-soft leather against his fingers, a hesitance in the touch that makes Iruka’s eyes prickle in something other than bitter resentment and loneliness for a change, and he watches as Hound’s fingers curve around his own. Every universe comes to a trembling standstill and then slides into one another; the only thing of note in this new, converged world is the gentle, unsure way the hand of a killer holds his.

“Is this… okay?” Hound asks quietly, his voice slightly distorted by the mask, the words vibrating all the way down at the bottom of his register.

“I’m sorry.” It rushes out of him like water, unstoppable now that it’s been undammed. Hound’s fingers tense as if they mean to slip away and Iruka curls his own around them, stopping them. Their fingers slide together, his skin aching where the leather rubs against it, and Iruka thinks about ripping off the glove and tossing it over the edge. “I’m sorry I yelled. I’m not mad.”

“It’s okay, though? Friends do this sometimes, right?”

“I… don’t know." Mizuki doesn't really touch him outside of pushing him down. "But it’s okay. It can be… it can be something we do,” Iruka says softly. The sound of his pants sliding against the dirt is lost to the wind, and Hound turns to watch as he scoots a little closer, their arms brushing. “Is this okay?”

He receives no reply, just the reassuring press of leather.

“Tell me something,” Hound says, and Iruka—a little bit more daring than a thumb brushing across a palm—rests his temple against Hound’s shoulder. When he isn’t immediately shaken off, he allows himself to close his eyes.

“Tell you what? About the other me?”

“About normal you. Do your eyes change color often? How did you get that scar? What’s your favorite food?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“They’re the only things I don’t know about you.”

Iruka rubs his cheek against cold skin, feeling too big for his body, too charged. He wants to explode. Chakra-dead or not, he wants to launch himself from the edge, just open his arms and soar. “You just met me. You don’t know anything about me.”

_You know nothing of our depths and depths and depths._

“Not true. I know your name is Umino Iruka, that you might jump off a mountain if some dumb kid asks, and you like to trick people who hurt you. You’re bad at making friends, but you want them, because you think you’re alone. You’ve got a quick temper, but you’re even quicker to forgive, and while you don’t have a lot of money you make do with what you’ve got. You’re…” What started out as a smug list of observations falters, becomes soft and almost lost to the wind. “You’re a bit weird, but interesting. Kind. You’re kind. And your eyes are black most of the time.”

During his first year at the Academy, he fell off the high climb and cut his head open. He bled everywhere, and there’s still a stain on the dojo floor where it happened; he was even given blood at the hospital to make up for what he lost, and a bunch of nurses tutted at him and told him how grateful he ought to be. Even the Hokage came for a visit, bringing apples and his shougi board. But even with his skull showing just a little bit through his hair that day, Iruka didn't feel nearly as exposed as he does now.

“So, I know you,” Hound concludes, and wraps an arm around Iruka’s shoulders like it’s something they do all the time. Like he knows Iruka. "You didn't answer my questions, by the way."

“My favorite food is ramen, I don't remember how I got the scar, and my eyes are black all the time. Hound—” He rides out the frantic flutter of his heart, the crest of the blood in his ears. He's so warm. “I wish I could know things about you. Your name. Your face. Your favorite food.”

“I can’t tell you my name. I can’t tell you anything,” Hound says, and turns to rest the mask lightly atop Iruka’s hair. “But I want to.”

“Names aren’t important.” Not really. Not nearly as important as the feel of gloved fingers between his own. “... But not even your favorite food?”

“Not even that.”

The arm around his shoulders tightens just a bit, and Iruka smiles a little. They sit slumped into each other for long, comfortable minutes; maybe for hours, or even years, the lines of their bodies merging, until he isn’t sure where they begin and end.

_You are the beginning and the end._

“I can’t stay for much longer.” Hound shifts, belying the statement by holding him closer, the embrace as thrilling as it is comforting.

“I figured you couldn’t hang around all day,” Iruka says quietly. “I’ll be sad to go back to being normal Iruka."

“I’ll be sad to leave him.”

 _So don’t_. It burns on his tongue, desperate to be said. _We’ll go somewhere together. We’ll be the people we want to be somewhere else._ He’ll be a brilliant shinobi who isn’t chakra-dead and secretly likes being called _Iruka-kun_ , and Hound will be someone with a name and face that are his own. Their future yawns out from where their fingers are interlocked—a place with the smell of salt in the air and white cliffs; a cozy apartment, warm mugs of tea on a clean kotatsu, smiles, laughter. Soft touches. Maybe even… maybe even kisses. It makes him dizzy and hot just thinking about it, peeling the mask away and pushing up into the mouth beneath it. Maybe they would kiss all the time, because they know everything about each other.

Iruka swallows hard, nose and eyes burning with an impending storm, and he gasps out, “Why?”

“Everyone looks at the mask like there’s a monster behind it. They’re not wrong. I am. I’m a monster, so they run, or scream, or wait for me to kill them, because what else do you do when you’re faced with a monster? But you… you gave me your name. You gave me your hand, just because you wanted to.”

There’s a low, thoughtful hum, a rumble against Iruka’s that shakes everything loose, and Hound moves a bit, cracking their bodies apart to let a little bit of air through between them.

This is it, then. This is the end of this. The game is over; reality has cleared the board, and soon there will be nothing to show Hound was ever here except for a swirl of leaves and the faint warmth lingering in his hand.

He wants to cry a little. He wants to rail against the village for binding his happiness in a white mask and calling it the shinobi way. For making him be the person who knows what it is to hold someone’s hand for the first and last time.

 _I should’ve jumped_ , he thinks miserably. _It would’ve been better than this._

But instead, Iruka exhales. He is a ninja of Konoha, or he will be someday, and if this is to be his _shinobi way_ then he will follow it to the best of his ability, no matter how much it hurts. He clambers to his feet and pulls Hound with him, allowing himself to squeeze the hand in his once more before letting go completely.

“You’re not a monster. You’re my friend. You’re _mine_ , and I’ll never forget you,” Iruka promises, not quite able to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“I’ve given you nothing to remember,” Hound says. The apology weighs down the words. He lifts a gloved finger to trace the skin just beneath Iruka’s right eye, unbearably gentle. “It’d probably be best if you forgot all about this.”

“Probably,” Iruka agrees. “But I won’t.”

He looks up through his lashes, drinking in the deep red whorls of the hound mask, the porcelain handsome but frightening in its anonymity. There could be anyone beneath it—someone he's walked past countless times in the street, or even one of his teachers. But there's something young about Hound, something sweet in the curves of his gloved fingers, the silver of his hair, that makes Iruka wonder.

It doesn’t matter. Hound will always be Hound, and Iruka has promised to never forget him.

“Thanks, normal Iruka,” Hound murmurs, slowly disentangling their hands and leaving Iruka trembling and very, very cold.

"Wait!" Because he knows Hound is about to disappear into nothing—a dramatic exit in a swirl of wind and leaves, and then that will be it.

Obediently, Hound waits.

Iruka opens his mouth, but the words don't come. He's not sure he has them, if they've even been written yet, can be arranged in such a way that he'll be understood by whoever it is that stands in front of him.

Hound says nothing, and the mask tilts, as if it were a real dog hearing something interesting and new for the first time.

It's on the tip of his tongue to explain, to tell Hound about what happened when he first came—about the—the thing that…  Something both cold and hot is making itself known between his eyes, flaring brightly and then pulsing in a steady rhythm. He can't quite grasp it, and the longer he waits to talk, more of the before disappears from him, until it's nothing but the bare whisper of a forgotten dream, a murmur of sound from far away.

"Hey," Hound says, taking pity on him. “Are you—?"

Iruka slumps a bit, suddenly very tired. Once he’s done getting sweet revenge on Bunya, he's going to sleep for a week. Maybe longer. Maybe forever. "I… I don't know. I can't—Never mind. I'll be fine."

Hound says nothing, does nothing; stands there like he's about to put down roots and call the mountain home—a terrifying scarecrow, keeping watch over the village and all its inhabitants. If he does, Iruka will put down roots right beside him.

Mustering up a smile, he tries to look disarming and responsible. Like he’s not looking for excuses to keep Hound for a few seconds longer. Like anyone else. "I think I'm still a little—" He wiggles his fingers next to his temple "—from before. Really. I'll be okay. I'm going to go straight home."

There's a pulse of chakra—chakra Iruka can _see_ , like lightning bursting across the sky—and the hard lines of Hound's body begin smudging and pulling apart, as if someone had sighed and blown him away like dandelion clocks. "Go to the hospital first, just to make sure."

"I will." He won't.

It wins him an amused snort. "Don't disappear into yourself like that again. Don't go where I can't follow."

Iruka sucks in a breath, heart thudding, and nods dumbly.

"Oh, and if you're looking for help in getting back at your not-friends, go find Shiranui Genma. He’ll give you a hand." Two fingers lift and cock in farewell. "Take care of those not-always-black eyes for me, normal Iruka-kun.”

“What color did you think they were?” Iruka asks, his always-and-forever-black eyes burning with a caged storm.

“Blue. For a second back there, they looked blue.”

With a sound like an exhale, the last of the mask disappears into nothing, and Iruka is alone again. The wind paws at him, and he shivers, turning up his coat against it the best he can and casting a heavy look out where Konoha bustles below him. After a moment, he looks back to where Hound had been, and feels the absence like a knife to the gut.

“Thank you,” he whispers. It’s what he should have said the second those gloved fingers slipped between his own like water, like they belonged there. Before anything else, he should have said that.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, he turns back to Konoha.

The sky is losing light, the sun dipping beneath the horizon, and he'll need to start for the village now if he is to make it home before the gates shut. Sleep won't find him tonight; there's a revenge plot to hatch, after all. Shiranui Genma is that chuunin kid who's always chewing senbon; somewhere underneath all that lazy charm is probably a mean streak an acre wide. It's always the quiet ones.

_You have dammed me well, First Son, and I will wait._

Time to get things in order. He’ll start with Bunya Hachi and work his way up from there.

As he turns to begin the trek back to the village, something pushes and pulls at him, a susurrus of all-encompassing power, like the crashing of waves, which is a bit odd.

_But you cannot hold back the tide forever._

He's never been to the sea.


	3. Omens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Place your bets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty much filler as far as the plot's concerned, but I usually try to have a chapter devoted to characterization and development in my longer works. Who doesn't like a little exposition? 
> 
> All right, fine. I really just wanted to write a whole lot of Genma.

"All right, everyone, listen up. The final round of the Chuunin Exam’s tomorrow, which means it's time to place your bets! Who's gonna make it, who's gonna fail, and who's gonna die in horrible yet hilarious wa—ow, _hey_."

Thanks to years of practicing on unruly children under the age of twelve, Iruka is able to nail Genma between the eyes with his pen without so much as looking up. "That's quite enough of that, thank you." To Anko, he hands back her mission report and says, "You forgot to fill out the entire middle section. Again. Actually, I'm not sure if you've _ever_ remembered to fill it out. Next time, just turn in a complete report the first time around and save us both the trouble."

"Just take it, Iruka."

"I can't, Anko-san, you know the rules. Just fill it in really quick, please. I've got a line behind you…"

"I haven't slept in four days, the dango kiosk is going to close in ten minutes, and I know twenty-nine ways to kill you without spilling a single drop of blood," Anko says sweetly, and Iruka has no doubt in his mind that it's true. If he had half a brain in his head, he'd cow to her and fudge the report himself.

But some of the people in line are starting to shift and mutter amongst themselves, the air buzzing with rising discontent and chakra, which is the last thing he needs, so he rustles the report encouragingly and pastes on a sunny smile. "And you can tell me _all_ about it… in the middle section. Which needs to be filled out before you can get paid."

"They'll never find your body," Anko growls, snatching the report from his hand and grabbing a pen from the cup by his elbow.

"You’re doing our shinobi a disservice, Anko-san. They might find all the pieces eventually," he says, demure. "Next!"

Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, Genma watches Anko storm away. "Do you need a wheelbarrow to carry your balls around? Jeez. Remind me again why you're not jounin?"

It's a question with which Iruka's familiar, an old friend he finds himself running into on the odd mission he takes now and again, or in this very room amongst those who actually bear the title and can't imagine that he could ever be satisfied as a low-rank.

He smiles a little and says, "Because I don't need it."

It's the same answer he always gives. It even has the virtue of being true. There have been successful jounin who depend solely on taijutsu and cleverness, so he knows he could do it if he wanted, but his teaching certificate hangs on the wall of his sitting room for all to see and he can give the names, strengths, and weaknesses of all his current and former students at the drop of a hat. His fingers hold the indents made by the bodies of chalk, and parents of the next generation know him by name, stop him in the market sometimes to chat or thank him for helping their children realize their potential. Tamaru-sensei, once a spectre to be feared and hated when he was a boy, is now a respected colleague who, upon entering Iruka’s classroom for the first time, shook his hand and said, _I always knew you’d find your path. I just wish that path hadn’t been paved with thumbtacks._ Teaching isn’t just his duty—he’s well-suited to it in a way that most aren’t. It’s not the wild and fantastical life of a jounin, but it’s his and he's content.

"Hm." Genma chews thoughtfully on his senbon for a moment, leaning up against the desk with the impatient air of someone in need of something to do. It's never boded well for anyone within a fifty mile radius when Genma gets like this.

"What would your thing be, if you were, though?"

"My _thing_?"

"Mm. Your signature. You know, Asuma has the knuckles, I've got my senbon… What about you, though? Smacking their hands with a ruler when they've been bad? Probably making them wash erasers."

"Probably keeping _your_ dumb ass out of—" He's interrupted by the sudden thrust of a report under his nose. "Ah, thank you. Any particular issues, Yamanaka-san?"

Yamanaka Inoichi shrugs, impatience writ into his otherwise kind features. The mission, a C-Rank with a surprisingly decent price tag, was a lengthy one. "Nah, not really."

Iruka used to wonder at Ino having such a steady hand for a girl her age, but as he goes over Yamanaka's report with its tidy penmanship and no-nonsense checked boxes, it suddenly makes perfect sense.

He stamps it and adds it to the pile. "Thank you for your hard work, Yamanaka-san."

Yamanaka smiles wryly. "Haven't really talked to you since Ino was in the Academy, sensei. How's the latest batch treating you?"

Iruka opens his mouth to give a pleasantly rote reply, then pauses, remembering that one of the Aburame kids brought a hornet's nest to class today and then _dropped it_. The ensuing chaos and many trips to the nurse for bandages and epinephrine injections were enough to drive Iruka to drink—unfortunately, Nobuko-sensei's secret alcohol drawer has an exploding tag welded to it, the greedy old bag. Shortly thereafter, Inuzuka Michi released a band of feral dogs she decided to adopt into the Academy, the classroom windows will never recover after Konohamaru's little _slime jutsu_ , a girl named Hironobu Junko set fire to the entire training field, and three new teachers quit on the spot.

_Pass on your will of fire, Iruka. Lead the coming generations to glory, Iruka. They're just kids, Iruka, what's the worst that could happen?_

That he hasn't snapped and roamed the countryside killing kids under the age of ten with a spoon is a miracle. In all honesty, he's too tired at the end of the day to even make the attempt. Maybe _that's_ why he's so well-suited to it.

He hopes the smile on his face is even a little convincing. "I'm never bored."

Yamanaka walks away laughing like it's the funniest damn thing he's ever heard, and tosses a friendly hand up in goodbye. Iruka hopes he falls down the stairs.

"Spoken like a true masochist," Genma says, wagging the senbon between his teeth.

"I will make you eat that thing, I swear to every god," Iruka grouses.

Genma grins. "A _brave_ masochist. Speaking of, seen much of the brat lately?"

“Naruto?”

“No,” Genma says with an unnecessary eye roll. “Your _other_ ear-piercingly loud foster kid. Yes, Naruto.”

Warmth blossoms in his chest so suddenly that it manifests into a shiver that wracks his entire body. He has no right to be so pleased at the thought of that loud-mouthed whirlwind being part of his family, that somewhere in those veins Umino blood mingles with that of Yondaime and the beast that killed him. Naruto’s pain was ignored for so long—believed to be less worthy than everyone else’s, even Iruka’s own. It was easier to pass by a gilded-haired little boy with cheeks dirtied by tears than to stop and acknowledge his suffering with even a simple kind word. Iruka had been his teacher, his _guide_ , charged to protect all his students at the basest of levels, and he failed.

He has no right.

The thought is dispelled by a smack upside the head, and Iruka startles with a strangled yell frankly unbecoming a ninja.

Lowering his hand, Genma looks unimpressed. “The kid loves you, moron, so don’t start pulling that maudlin bullshit on me. I know how you get. Is he ready for tomorrow?”

Iruka pushes the self-pity into a box to be reopened another day. “He’s been training with some random guy who knocked out the jounin-sensei he was _supposed_ to train with, which—I think I need to talk to the Hokage about it. I don’t know how I feel about our impressionable genin being allowed to spend time with weirdos.”

“‘Weirdo’? Isn’t that a little harsh?"

“Naruto calls him _Perverted Sage_ ,” Iruka says. It could very well be an exaggeration—someone who invented something called the Sexy Jutsu has no room to cast stones—but the long-suffering look Naruto gets whenever he mentions his latest mentor speaks of a terrible truth. If Naruto comes out of this new training with a predilection for bath houses, Iruka won’t be responsible for his actions.

Genma’s eyebrows nearly brush the edge of his bandana, and he chews thoughtfully. “Well, it’s not like we all haven’t been there, right?”

Iruka stares. “Do I even want to ask?”

There's a whisper of metal that cuts through the air, a familiar sound that puts everyone in the room on edge, and a kunai embeds itself into the desk between his third and fourth fingers. Threaded through the kunai's finger grasp is a rolled-up scroll.

He blinks at it like a slack-jawed idiot and looks up to see Anko standing in the doorway, one foot already in the hall.

"Well?" She says, like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. "Isn't there something you should be saying right about now?"

"'Help, help, there's a psychotic nin throwing kunai at teachers, someone take her down'?" Genma suggests helpfully.

"Shiranui, you can kiss the little strawberry beauty mark on the left cheek of my perfect ass."

"Name a time and a place," Genma purrs.

"You wish," Anko says. The smirk that slithers across her face is _terrifying_.

"I really don't."

Having made a career of tuning out stupidity, Iruka squares his shoulders and unspools the report, giving it a quick once-over. The weapons list section is filled out in Anko’s beautiful, sweeping calligraphy. The impact is somewhat lessened by the fact that it’s been written into the shape of a hand giving the finger.

Choking back a laugh, he stamps the report and trills, "Thank you for your hard work, Anko-san. Have a wonderful night."

"Die," Anko says as she ambles out.

"Always a pleasure, Anko!" Genma calls after her, then slumps back against the desk, already bored.

Iruka gathers the reports and wraps a rubber band around them, frowning when the edge of one slices through the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, the skin parting as if kissed. "If I were a betting man, I'd wager a snake being the last thing you ever see. Remind me again why _you're_ jounin?"

"Because I'm crazy skilled," Genma says, shrugging. "And I think the exam proctor was drunk that day."

"Sounds about right."

Four shinobi hand in their reports—three of them chuunin, one a jounin with part of his bottom lip missing—before Genma turns a too-interested look his way.

"Now that the kid’s out of your hair for a while, whatcha been up to? Have you been doing anything interesting lately?"

If it were anyone else, he’d suspect that of being a line, but Genma would never stray into that territory, not when they’ve known each other for so long. Genma had been nearly nineteen years old when Iruka, hair still smelling of the cold air atop the Hokage Monument, knocked on his window and asked if he wanted to make a bully cry. And Genma, alone in his room while many of the other kids his age were out and about with friends, alone the way Iruka was alone, had smiled slowly and said around the senbon between his teeth, "What'dja have in mind?"

Outside of some good-natured ribbing, not once did a word of enmity twist around the senbon to cross Genma’s lips; he never pushed Iruka down or away, never called him _dead-last_ , or brought up the Nine-Tails just to get a rise out of him. He made Iruka’s pranks better, his focus sharper, and the fact that Genma was an entire rank above him never seemed to factor into things. He listened when Iruka spoke, laughed when Iruka joked, and seemed desperately glad to see him. There were days when Genma came and found _him_ , an odd change that Iruka was wary of enjoying too much, lest it stop. But it didn’t. Genma was the friend Iruka had never allowed himself to imagine having, the stopper that plugged the hole in his life.

Genma will never know the depth of Iruka’s gratitude. Mostly because he’d never let Iruka hear the end of it.

"And by ‘doing,’ I mean sex," Genma clarifies with a grin, rolling the senbon deftly over his tongue. “C’mon, sensei. The spinster thing is really starting to bore me. You’re wound so tight that my balls shrivel whenever I see you.”

“Please don’t tell me about your balls, ever,” Iruka groans.

“You’re a nice-looking guy, and we’ve all heard you shouting after Naruto for a variety of reasons over the years. I’d put good money down on you being an all-night screamer.”

A couple of the people in line poke their heads out, faces alight with interest. If he listens carefully, Iruka can actually hear the sound of his reputation imploding.

“I will literally _pay_ you to stop talking.”

Genma chortles. “That kind of money doesn’t even exist.”

There are many concerns in a ninja’s life: the success of a mission, loyalty to their village and Hokage, training to maintain their body—among many other things. But the biggest and most pressing of the lot is that of a sharply-honed mind descending into madness. Many break under the pressures of shinobi life, unable to withstand the consequences of being mired in so much death and destruction. It’s a valid worry for most and a reality for others. But on the list of things Iruka needs to worry about, the sudden onset of insanity is on page twelve after _Is Ichiraku using too much miso in their broth?_

At least he thought it was. He never would have pegged _Genma_ as being the catalyst of his downward spiral into lunacy, but in hindsight, he probably should’ve seen it coming.

“So there’s this jounin I know—”

“Oh my god, you’re still talking,” Iruka says, horrified.

“He’s got really big hands. Like, ridiculously big. Possibly because of some weird condition, I don’t know, but the guy can break boulders with barely a thought. Just—bam! Gravel.”

The next shinobi in line gives Iruka a pitying look.

“Imagine having those hands hold you up against a wall—”

“Genma, do you _want_ me to set you on fire? Is that what this is? You keep opening your mouth, and all I hear is _Please send me to the burn unit, Iruka._ ”

“He sort of smells like feet, though, so maybe not. The point still stands: we’ve got to find someone who’ll give it to you _good_. Someone who has an actual name and face.”

Iruka sucks in a breath, but it stalls in his throat. “Genma!”

“Unless you’ve got a thing for masks.”

The words crackle up the length of his spine, a lit fuse that rides up and explodes at the base of his skull. The shock wave passes through every single nerve, every pulse point, through muscle, sinew, and bone. He shudders, clenching his teeth. Push it down. Push it _down_. “Genma, shut up.”

Deep inside, something stirs.

“Oh, come on,” Genma says. “You’re, what, twenty-four? That’s practically middle age for us, and what do you have to show for it? Seeing the occasional mutt isn't a sign, you know, and hanging around waiting for some anonymous nin to come back for you isn’t doing you any favors.”

“Genma,” he tries again, tongue loose and thick in his mouth. His vision swims a little. “You promised—”

There’s a familiar twitching in his spine, a niggle rubbing against bone that begs to be itched but can’t be found, and he’s felt this before. He pushes at it, forces it down, but it rears up against him, interested, ravenous, streaking through every nerve, artery and vein, sinking into the folds and wrinkles of tissue and gray matter until it coats every part of him. It hungers for attention, whines for release, and he thinks of the last time it surfaced like this. A leak had sprung from a hole in his spine the size of a fuuma shuriken blade, and Mizuki—who lied and called it friendship—had stood and gloated over him, pressing his foot down and laughing, _laughing_ , as the blade slipped a little further in. The urge to rise up and spend himself into the forest, to trickle down Mizuki’s throat until the body busted at its traitorous seams, was overwhelming.

 _Wash him away_. It had come from inside, a thousand voices clamoring to be acknowledged. _Take me up as your sword and wash him from this earth._

“Genma,” he grits out, casting a wild, frightened gaze at the shinobi in line and ambling around the mission room. They’re all too close. “That’s enough.”

But Genma doesn’t pay him any heed, or simply refuses to listen, and instead calls out, “Hey, Raidou! Stop boring those lovely ladies and come over here for a second. You’ve gotta hear about this weird fuck dream Iruka had about an ANBU when he was fift—”

Before the sentence finishes, Iruka is on his feet, chair clattering backwards, with clawed fingers gouged into the front of Genma’s flak vest. He vaguely hears someone gasp somewhere in the room, but he can’t see anything except white, can’t hear anything but the whispers of encouragement, _your secrets spill past his lips as if they were his to freely give, wash him away_ , _wash him from this earth_ , and the blood pounding in his ears like the crash of waves against rock. It would be easy, so very easy to hold Genma down, rinse away the bonds that bind them together—friendship, brotherhood, _nakama_ —and flood his imperfect, fragile body with the true power of its rage. It has been dammed for far too long in old blood and young skin, and those who once screamed and cried out for it now whisper. They would do well to remember to whom they ought thank for their insignificant lives, as if any of them could leave a lasting mark; perhaps if it makes an example of the little crab in its thrall then—

“Iruka.” Genma holds very still. “Iruka. Relax, man, _jeez_.”

The bone-white of the senbon between Genma’s mouth catches its attention, the purse of lips tight and ready; one focused muscle twitch will embed it in Iruka’s forehead. The thing inside him surges, singing at the promise of release, a battle for honor, and he shoves it down as far as he can the moment the white in his vision begins to recede, retreating to sulk elsewhere.

A whisper of intent moves through the air, over a dozen ninja in the room primed to intervene, hands on their weapons, fingers curled should a binding seal need to be made. Iruka comes back to himself, washing up on the shores of consciousness and soaked through with shame and uneasiness.

“It’s fine,” Genma calls out, cheerful, but his gaze on Iruka is coldly calculating and not a little bit surprised. “Just pushed our favorite teacher a little too far, it seems. What else is new?”

Slow to follow is the sound of weapons being put away.

“Genma…” He just attacked a jounin. A _special_ jounin. He ought to release Genma immediately and then beg for leniency, but he’s a little stupid and a lot brave, so he shakes Genma hard, once. “It was real. _He_ was real. I told you about that in confidence, Shiranui Genma, and you made me a promise, so now we’re going to honor that promise and _shut our mouths_ about it for the foreseeable future. Are we clear?”

Genma stares at him, plumbing the depths of him for some kind of understanding, and it takes him a moment before he nods and mutters, “Yeah. Yeah, we’re clear, sorry.”

Three months into their friendship—after the night they carried out what Genma gleefully called Operation: Childhood Trauma—he finally told Genma about the day an ANBU sat with him atop the Hokage Monument and held his hand as if it were something precious.

His confession was whispered into the night air, the two of them lying on Genma’s roof, curled toward each other like parentheses and manfully ignoring the fact that it was too cold to be outside at all.

_“So, are you in love with this guy?” Genma had asked, chewing thoughtfully on his senbon, the part of his face not pressed to the rooftop illuminated by the moon._

_“I don’t know,” Iruka whispered. His cheeks burned just to say the words, to admit that it happened, and even as he felt lighter for having told someone he wanted to push it back in and lock it away somewhere safe. “Maybe.”_

_“You don’t know his name. Or what he looks like. He could be anyone. He could… You said you fell into a weird trance_ — _what if this Hound guy was just your brain playing tricks?”_

_It was entirely possible; probable, even. But Iruka curled his hand, the one that still burned with the heat from butter-soft leather gloves, against his chest and breathed in and out. “No. No, it was real. I know it was. But you can’t ever say anything about it in front of anyone, ever. He could get in trouble. You have to promise.”_

_“All right, all right. I promise, Iruka. You can count on me.”_

_“Thanks, Genma.” Iruka hadn’t been able to stop the grateful smile that broke over his face like a sunrise, mirrored by the boy lying a few feet away. It was like a puzzle piece shifting into place, slotting home. A friend. Finally._

_“There's a dog that follows me sometimes. A silver one. I think it might be his.”_

_“Yeah, sure.”_

Exhaling, Iruka loosens his grip on Genma’s flak jacket and then steps back to right his chair, plopping down with a tremulous smile. His heart pounds and pounds and pounds, fixing to break his ribs, and the whirlpool raging in his gut softens, dissipates. “Good to hear.”

“Pfft,” Genma snorts. “That answers _that_ question.”

“Which question?”

“What your jounin specialty would be. Can we call it the Scary as Fuck Teacher Jutsu? Because you, teacher, are scary as fuck. Jeez. I didn’t feel a drop of killing intent, but I’m pretty sure I was just about to meet my maker.”

Lips pinched, Raidou wanders over, his flat gaze wandering up and down Genma with deliberate care. “What have I told you about antagonizing Iruka-san?”

Genma waves him off, rolling his shoulders a little and straightening his flak vest. “He loves it. I keep him constantly on his toes.”

“You keep me constantly annoyed,” Iruka laughs, nodding over the next kunoichi in line. “Don't you have somewhere else to be? Training grounds? The Hokage's office? The bottom of a ravine with both legs broken? I've got two hours left to this shift and there's no way I'm going to even make it through the next twenty minutes without doing something horrible to your person."

Genma sighs and pushes off the table with a dramatic flair that would make Gai weep with envy, as if every movement and muscle twitch pains him greatly. As if he hadn’t just been attacked by a comrade. "God, you’re boring—what happened to the little hellion that made Bunya Hachi’s stuffed animals come to life and try to smother him in his sleep?"

"It was _your_ chakra we used to do it," Iruka points out, and the kunoichi stifles a laugh as she hands over her mission scroll.

"Yeah, but it was your idea." Genma grins. “And you were the one who figured out how to get past the house’s wards.”

Iruka shrugs. “If anything, I did them a favor. Their security was pretty lax for a well-off shinobi family.”

“Iruka-san,” Raidou says with a tinge of good humor. “How out of character.”

“They didn’t try to smother him, okay? They just walked across the room and crawled into bed with him. Anyway, he deserved it.” He gives the kunoichi’s scroll a cursory once-over. Everything seems to be in order. “I wasn’t always a well-behaved paragon of virtue, you know.”

“You’re barely one now,” Genma says, eying the kunoichi’s backside as she leaves. Raidou elbows him in the side. "Ow. Quit it.”

“Be respectful of your fellow ninja,” Raidou intones.

“I’d respect the hell out of her.” Genma watches her leave, then snaps and points at Iruka. “Oh, man, remember when you made it sound like they were singing that schoolyard song as they climbed into bed with him, and Bunya just fucking _lost_ it? Scared me shitless. A bunch of little girls were singing it the other day and I nearly swallowed my senbon."

"More's the pity you didn't," Iruka laughs. "Please, though, go literally anywhere else. I'm working."

"Yeah, yeah. Join us for a drink later? The festival's in full swing."

Even Raidou’s dour expression lightens a little at that.

Iruka rolls his lips inward and smiles, shaking his head with an apology that he doesn't really feel. "I'm visiting my parents tonight."

"Ah." Genma doesn't say anything else about it, for which Iruka is irrationally grateful. "Whatever happened to that loser, anyway?"

If he tries hard enough, Iruka can still taste the candy he'd been sucking on when Tamaru-sensei came into class, stern and casting his ever-mistrusting glare over them, and announced that Bunya Hachi had dropped out of the Academy with plans to become a sheep farmer. The candy had come in a little wrapper that looked like a strawberry. It tasted like victory.

"Just couldn't hack it, I guess," Iruka says with a wicked grin.

Genma snorts and saunters away, waving absently over his shoulder. "Catch you later, Iruka. Don't forget to place your bets before tomorrow."

"Yeah, I'm not going to do that," Iruka calls out.

Raidou trails after Genma like a very scary shadow, but his slow gait comes to a stop and he turns, fixes Iruka with a hard stare, and says, “I would work on keeping a better handle on your temper, Iruka-san.”

Ice spindles up from his belly, wrapping cold fingers around each notch of his spine and stroking shivers up to his shoulders. He nods once. Raidou inclines his head and slips through the doorway.

He exhales, shoulders slumping with spent tension, and his hand lifts to rub a complaint into his chest. There’s a splash of connection where his fingers meet the fabric of his vest, the promise of contact singing between them, and it—the cold, rocking murmur deep down—settles with a hum.

 _Not yet_.

 

+

 

By the time his shift ends and he makes it to the Memorial Stone, the moon has fixed its cold throne high, casting a sweet but dim glow upon a thousand souls who have come and gone. He finds them easily enough, relatively high up from the bottom where the latest engravings have found a home—too high for him to reach.

 

_Umino Ikkaku_

_Umino Kohari_

 

Nestled amongst the others who fell the night the Nine-Tails was unleashed, his parents gaze down upon him, in pride or disappointment, or both—he really doesn’t know. He’s never asked, too afraid that they might actually reply. Too afraid that if they do, his questions will never stop. _Why did you keep me from helping you fight? Why couldn’t I have died with you? Why can’t I do things with chakra the way I should? What’s wrong with me? What is the thing that whispers to me and smells like salt and tastes like rage?_

He places a hand on his chest and presses into the steady beat of his heart, and then slides it down to rest over his diaphragm. The muscle there is shaped like an umbrella—he remembers from his teaching courses in anatomy how it bowed around the abdominal organs, a mother bird encircling its young, and how it was anything but empty. But he feels hollow there. Except for the moments when that thing, that churning, covetous presence sloshes in from nowhere at all and fills him to bursting.

As if answering a call he never made, it pushes up to meet him. He rips his hand away, breathing out, and it settles again.

He looks up at the stone, eyes skimming _Umino Kohari_ , and whispers, “Did you know?”

She never treated him as if there were anything about him to fear. There was no moment in which he caught her looking at him strangely, or furtively whispering to his father and stopping when he drew near. She used to tuck him under her arm like he was a bag of vegetables and pretend nothing was out of the ordinary about it as he kicked and squealed with laughter, and at night they would lie together in his bed that was too small to comfortably hold them and she would tell him about her first missions, her affinity for fire and how her sensei had to tailor every technique he knew to it, how she dreamt of opening another school with a contemporary curriculum. She used to cup both his cheeks and nuzzle her nose against his because he hated it, but he didn’t really, and she wasn’t stingy with her I-Love-Yous.

No. No, she couldn’t have known. She would have told him, certainly, and loved him despite it. Maybe even in spite of it.

He lets his eyes drift to the name above hers and doesn’t need to wonder.

There is no one he can ask about this, not without raising suspicion or dredging up the hatred that comes of having something large and unexplainable trapped inside an otherwise inconspicuous body. When they asked how he managed to survive a fuuma shuriken to the spine without sustaining heavy damage, he had no answers. He never should have been able to move again, let alone get to his feet to tie his hitai-ate around Naruto’s head. Instead he lay on his stomach in his hospital bed, the sharp scent of salt in his nose, and tried to stem the roaring within him, the tempest of black and blue and green that demanded vengeance for such a betrayal. It was weeks before he could get through a single day feeling entirely like himself. Even Sandaime had seemed perturbed that Iruka could be up and walking around so soon, and he would concentrate more on Iruka than the shougi board between them during their little meetings.

_What happened out there, my boy?_

And Iruka had sat there, sweating, unnaturally still, with his eyes locked on the shougi board so he wouldn’t have to look at the one person who never once doubted him in the eyes and lie, and repeated what he told Ibiki-sensei in his statement: _Naruto saved me._

If he brought it before the Hokage now, confessed to the storm inside him that raged that day in the forest, it would certainly mean his death. There is no way the Council, the Hokage’s attachment to him notwithstanding, would allow _two_ unstable nin running around.

He sighs. Life was so much easier when he was simply contemplating jumping off a mountain.

Placing the bouquet he bought from Yamanaka Flowers at the foot of the stone, he brings his palms together in prayer. It’s become almost routine, the gesture ringing a little hollow as he murmurs the words, but he really does hope his parents have found peace wherever they are.

“I love you both, and I’ll see you soon,” he says quietly, moves to take a step back, and—

And—

The stone stands, silent, solitary. As if of their own volition, his feet bring him a little closer.

Barely breathing, he reaches up and delicately presses reverent fingers to the notches in the stone, dragging over every chiseled stroke and glyph, names that belong to so many and now no one at all. He slowly walks his hand up and over, touching _Daichi_ , stroking _Takahiro_ , softly thumbing across _Masato_ , and closes his eyes lest a gloved hand reach out and curl around his own.

Don’t be any of these names, he pleads silently. Don’t be on here.

He’s being ridiculous, but the thought of one of these engravings belonging to Hound is the hot burn of a knife between his ribs, twisting until he gasps.

_Take care of those not-always-black eyes for me, normal Iruka._

The fingers of his other hand come up to brush carefully under his right eye.

Genma was right. Hanging around waiting for someone whose name and face he doesn’t know is the worst kind of stupid; the willful kind. It’s absolutely pathetic to be ten years after the fact with nothing to show for it but an unreliable, romanticized memory, especially when he has no proof that it even happened. What would Genma think if he knew that Iruka stopped taking lovers because their fingers didn’t fit right with his, that their bodies were unfamiliar against his. That none of them have ever been completely satisfied with normal Iruka, not the way an unknown nin was almost a decade ago.

He scoffs at himself.

What would he even do, honestly, if Hound did come back? If Hound, for some insane reason, remembered the dumb kid he saved and wanted Iruka—normal Iruka, and all that entails. Would he bump into Iruka in the street one day and introduce himself, or would he appear like a spectre in the night, mask in place only to be slowly slipped off to reveal… to reveal something Iruka’s never allowed himself to think about. Trying to imagine what lies behind white and red porcelain never fails to leave his gut heavy with something not unlike guilt.

A hopeless romantic lives underneath layers of practicality and the occasional flare of mischief. Even so, he can’t help but be ten years after the fact and still hoping against all hope that his faceless, nameless nin is somewhere out there, safe and sound behind the mask.

He presses his forehead to the stone. It’s shockingly cold and clears his mind of everything except a different kind of prayer. _Don’t go where I can’t follow._

Satisfied that he’s made enough of a fool of himself for one night, Iruka backs away from the stone with one last look.

When he gets home, he’ll wash the day away with a nice, hot bath before bed, and set his alarm for some obscenely early time—he’ll pull Naruto out of bed before he has to be at the arena and Iruka at the Academy, treat him to a breakfast of champions.

He smiles and turns.

Swathed in shadow, a sleek, gray mutt stares back, all smart angles where it sits, ears perked and tail curled about its paws. The breeze blows a bit, shifting the cover of shadow around it, and it flickers before his eyes like a ghost.

“It's—” Iruka cuts himself off, because what the hell can he even say?

The dog tilts its head in a curious gesture, disappearing half into the darkness. It huffs, glittering eyes staring up at Iruka a bit brazenly than is probably normal for a dog its size. It’s not nearly as large or dignified as the Inuzuka ninken, but it’s still a rather handsome little thing, and has been for as long as Iruka's caught glimpses of it out of the corner of his eye.

He jerks up to stand, his legs locking and fingers curling into fists. There’s blood pounding in his ears, or maybe it’s the roar of something else.

“It's you. You’re his, aren’t you? You belong to him.”

The sleek head inclines.

“He's okay?" Iruka blurts out. He’s trembling so hard he may actually need to sit down before his legs buckle, yet he feels so light, like he might just simply float away, drift to sink into the moon. “If you're here, then he's—”

He stops. The thin tail unwinds from where it’s curled about its front paws to thump against the ground, and its tongue lolls out, ears relaxed. It’s a happy affirmation.

Hound could have come to Iruka in person, but he didn’t. Perhaps he's far away. Perhaps he doesn't care enough to show himself and just wanted Iruka to stop looking for him in the Memorial Stone. Perhaps this isn't real at all. Whatever it is, it can be enough. He’s waited ten years for _something_ ; he won’t push for more just now.

“Good,” Iruka murmurs. He rubs at the heat in his cheeks. “That’s really good. Thank you, ninken-san. Can I, uh, interest you in a steak or something? There must be a few places still open...”

Its tail thumps again, approving, but it declines by joining the night air in a burst of white cloud, leaving Iruka alone with the ghosts of the village and the erratic pound of his own heartbeat.

Tilting his head back, he inhales the faint scent of the dispelled summons, ozone and parchment paper and some kind of pleasant intent, and grins, laughs a little. This is as good an omen for which he could ever ask. A sign of glad tidings to come.

The morrow looks brighter with every step he takes toward home.

He's almost sorry he didn't place a bet for the final round; it's sure to be spectacular.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spectacular. Yeah, let's go with that.


	4. Hadal (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chuunin Exam begins, and so does the invasion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that wouldn't fucking end.

_There is a monster that eats mountains and is wreathed in fur and flame, towering above the highest peaks, many-tailed and terrible, and he steps forward to extinguish it, turn its remains into silt from which new lives may grow to balance those taken. Except the monster is now a little boy with eyes that call to him, face marked in the black brushstrokes of his father's rash decisions, and is reviled. Except the boy is now loved, because he wills it._

_There is an unhappy man with an eye that does not belong to him who asks for something new—a fact lost to time or a true story that has never been told—and he pulls the man into his arms, lets him inside his body where he is deep and cold and endless, and whispers, "In the absence of the old ones, there is logic, but what you think is logic is simply the unwillingness to believe. You have progressed to a point where should you be faced with what the world has forgotten, you would go mad, as all you have come to know as fact, as logic, would crumble. Because of this, dark things sleep in dark corners and wait for the moment when logic loses its hold upon you. Then will they sleep no longer."_

_There is an unhappy murmur that ripples through fire, frost, and frond, and old voices once silenced grow loud, and louder still, until they are the only things to be heard. The clamor is beset by a tongue that melts and gives birth to hot and angry mountains, multiplied by three, and six eyes set their gaze upon five nations that had been given to the world as a gift, since squandered. Such an insult has never been, and there will be a punishment to fit the offense._

_There is a world that inhales to scream, as there is much pain and no balm with which to soothe it. But he moves across lands he has never seen and sweeps a hand out to share his knowledge—of storms that rage endlessly where none can see or hear them, of depths so deep and dark that the sun does not know of them—and he fills every crevice, every crack, until the world is awash with him._

_There is a woman with hair like a sky full of stars and eyes that belong to no one else, and she carries him close to her heart as she waltzes, one-two-three, one-two-three. Her voice rolls over him like a never ending song to which he doesn’t know the words, and yet he knows it well, knows the feel of flesh melting into scales, of a body once claimed and discarded like old clothes. He dissolves in her arms, a fleeting fancy, and she erupts into endless blue, wearing her freedom as a cloak._

_She calls to him as a terrible, writhing vengeance bathes the world in red and gold and orange, her voice ringing out like a roar, like a battle cry, like the very thread of life knitted in bone, flesh, and thought._

_You are my continuation. I have given myself to you, so you must never turn your back on the—_

 

With a sharp inhale and a full-body jerk that feels more dramatic than it should be, Iruka wakes up and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

Rolling onto his back, he shoves his fists into his eyes and rubs until green and purple spots dance behind his lids, capping it off with a groan loud enough that his neighbors will probably start banging on the walls. Or congratulate him for finally getting some.

He feels awful—too weighted for his skin, stretched so tight over his bones that one wrong move will rip the whole thing to shreds. The sheets are sweat-damp and coiled about his legs like idle serpents, and his muscles ache with the tension of a badly-strung wire, positively strumming with anticipation for something that has no name or reason. Even during the sleepless nights leading up to his own Chuunin Exam, he hadn’t been so uneasy.

His fingers twitch against his stomach, the brush of dreams lingering between them like cigarette smoke, wanting nothing more than to grab hold of them, keep them somehow before they disappear. He untangles himself from his sheets and stumbles out of bed to the window, sliding it open with a grateful sigh.

There’s a family of bush warblers that lives in the tree just outside, and the little bastards take a truly frightening amount of satisfaction in waking him up before his alarm every morning. As much as Iruka would like to pretend he’s not the kind of person who would kill wildlife for being annoying, he’s never been much of a pretender. Despite the deep-seated hatred that sparks whenever he hears _pi pi pi kekyo kekyo Hooo- hoke'kyo Hoohokekyo_ , his gut cramps in anticipation of it.

Because he’s never outgrown the need to do something with his hands, his fingers tap a broken rhythm against his bare thigh. He rolls his shoulders. Shifts his weight onto his other leg. Runs a hand through his hair. Swallows reflexively and presses his forehead to the cool glass of the pane, exhaling, eyes drifting shut. His body will adjust soon enough, will stop moving so he can just be. Any moment now, and the warblers will fill the air with their shrill song.

A minute passes. Two.

He opens his eyes.

There’s nothing—no morning breeze, no warbling. Just an oddly pregnant sky with thick, slate-colored clouds limned in red.

Iruka pushes away from the window pane and shivers, the sweat on his skin dissipating and leaving his skin uncomfortably tight.

So he stands there for a moment, breathing, allowing himself a moment of idleness where he would normally fill the silence with something—grading, or making a quick snack—anything to make him feel a little more real than he does whenever he’s here for extended periods of time.

As a boy, he always thought that, one day, living alone wouldn’t be so hard. Silences would be comfortable, because he would be comfortable with the person he’d become, and he would be grown enough to fill out the mattress and erase the extra room, and, in turn, the need for someone else to be there. He wouldn’t wish so hard for the empty walls to crumble down around him—not when he would someday have filled them with artwork and his jounin certificate and pictures of all his friends. Thirteen-year old him would be so disappointed to learn that not much changed when he got older, except there's a teaching certificate on the wall... and he that doesn't feel guilty about eating ramen after midnight anymore.

Other than the nights when Tamaru-sensei and his wife come over, this place isn't a home, which is why it’s so very easy for him to leave it every day at the ass-crack of dawn for the Academy, or the market, or stay at the mission desk until closing.

He blows out a breath and shifts again, glancing out of the corner of his eye to the clock on the wall. “Shit.”

With quick, rote movements, he twists his hair into its usual tail, throws on a pair of pants and a relatively clean flak vest, and flies out the door.

Despite its prosperity over the last couple of decades, Konoha proper isn’t all that big—it can be easily walked from one end to the other in an hour. The smart, concise design of the village makes it seem larger than it actually is, and coupled with its sprawling forest territory it seems endless. But Iruka moves easily through the streets, nodding in greeting at those already up and about; normally his route to work is congested with his students—former and current—vying for his attention, or parents hoping for a moment of his time to discuss their children, and he barely makes it to the Academy on time. This morning finds him on a different route, one softened by the oddness of the sky, and it isn’t long before he turns a corner and finds himself at his destination.

He feels his mouth curl up into a sneer.

In the pantheon of things to hate, Naruto’s apartment is up there.

The building itself is a thrown-together monstrosity that looks as though it’s one rusty nail away from collapsing entirely, situated in one of the more run-down neighborhoods of Konoha and pushed between two other buildings like a tumor. Most of the windows, at least the ones with actual glass in them, have bars, and the ones that don’t are patched over with plastic or nothing at all. There are two flower boxes hanging from one of the first floor apartment windows; Iruka would be more shocked to find actual flowers in them and not bags of drugs, which he’s pretty sure the occupants manufacture out of their kitchen.

He tried tracking down the landlord once, but no one actually knows who owns the building; rent is given to the one-eyed ninneko that sits on the front stoop.

Some of Iruka’s best daydreams involve burning the whole thing to the ground. It would probably be the kindest renovation it’s ever had. He’s seriously considered it. The jail time would be more than worth it.

As he turns to go up to the top floor, he damn near trips over someone in the stairwell. A man. No, not just a man—a shinobi, clutching a bottle of something that is probably illegal, the gauze bindings discolored and loose where they wrap around his calves. He looks blearily up as Iruka passes, and slurs, “How much?”

“You couldn’t afford me,” Iruka says. If his eyes roll any further back into his head, he’ll see gray matter.

“I could’ve rocked your world, you stuck-up priss!” The man calls, and follows that witty rejoinder up with thick, raucous cackling.

Iruka’s feet make not a sound as he whirls and throws his arm out, but the man at the bottom of the stairs screeches like his hair is on fire when the kunai buries itself into the concrete inches away from his crotch with a soft _thunk_.

“And I could’ve aimed better,” Iruka says sweetly, turning to trot up the remaining steps. The stunned silence behind him more than makes up for the fact that he’s down a kunai.

He’s forced to dredge up an old and beloved skill to pick the lock on Naruto’s door, because the little idiot won’t put up any wards, but once Iruka depresses the last pin, he stops. Instead of turning the knob, he takes a few steps back to drink in the whirlpool symbol tacked onto the door. He once offered to buy Naruto an actual name plaque, something solid and permanent, but Naruto shrugged it off and said, “I already had a nice name thing but someone came by and crushed it. I don’t care so much if something happens to the paper.”

It took a little digging and money exchanged hands a few times, but Iruka ended up finding the guy who broke Naruto’s nameplate and had a drink with him at some dive bar on the outskirts of town. He also ended up dragging the man’s unconscious body to the bathroom and gluing exploding tags to his balls.

Iruka smiles to think of it and is still smiling when he kicks the door open as though he were a member of the T&I Unit on a bust, and his heart positively glows to see Naruto shriek “NOT THE TONKATSU!” and fall ass-over-teakettle out of bed.

“Glad to see those finely-honed shinobi skills are working out for you. Especially since you’re going to be pitting them against the one of the best in your age group in a few hours.”

“Owwww,” groans the pile of boy and blankets on the floor. “Iruka-sensei?”

“No, I’m the Hokage. I’ve cleverly disguised myself as your stunningly handsome and perpetually overworked former Academy teacher in order to provide you with this personal wake-up call,” Iruka says dryly.

Naruto glares up at him from his makeshift nest, lower lip stuck out in a pout. “You’re not funny.”

“Considering I’m taking you out for breakfast before your match, I’m the funniest damn person in this room.” He tilts his head to get a better look at the shadows beneath Naruto’s eyes, the imprint of the pillowcase on Naruto’s cheeks, and frowns. “Naruto, did you sleep at _all_ last night?”

Spine arching, Naruto sits up with an almost feline grace, opens his mouth to answer, and then blinks at his open door.

“Iruka-sensei… did you _break in_? Did you _commit a crime_ just to come and wake me up?” A slow, awed smile slides across Naruto’s face like a lit fuse, ignited by the prospect of his former teacher breaking and entering for the sole purpose of coming to see him.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Iruka allows his gaze to wander around for a moment, taking it all in. He somehow doubts his expression is as neutrally pleasant as he’d like it to be. “Were you practicing a wind jutsu in here? It looks like a bomb hit.”

“Uh…” As if a fire had been lit under him, Naruto struggles out of the embrace of his blankets and stumbles around, all coltish legs and red cheeks, picking up empty ramen cups and haphazardly-thrown pairs of old underwear.

A lecture or a good stretch of shouting wouldn’t be out of place—Naruto keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye and flinching, waiting for the axe to fall—and Iruka really ought to… but it isn’t too hard to see himself in the mess. His own apartment wasn’t any great shakes when he was Naruto’s age—with piles of dirty laundry like hills that hadn’t the wherewithal to be mountains, half-read books tossed about like stepping stones, and old takeout growing armies in the fridge. Visitors had been rare, and as such there wasn’t a pressing need to clean constantly, easier to let everything pile up and deal with it when he needed to. It filled the emptiness a little.

The only truly clean spot in the apartment is the little table upon which a framed photograph stands. Against the backdrop of a peaceful forest is Team 7 in various poses—Uchiha Sasuke glowering off-camera, Naruto glowering at _him_ , Haruno Sakura in between them both and trying to salvage the shot, and Hatake Kakashi as their benefactor and teacher, arms encompassing all three.

Iruka picks it up gingerly and studies the overwhelmed, yet happy expression on Kakashi’s hidden face and concedes, deep down, that he might owe the man an apology for calling him incompetent in front of Sandaime. His temper has never been subtle, and it’s known to rise unexpectedly with devastating results. It was unforgivable, what he said, and the next time he sees Hatake Kakashi he’ll say so.

_“Putting them in a dangerous situation would be interesting. Ruining them would also be interesting.”_

“Iruka-sensei, what are you doing?”

“Definitely not thinking about murdering anyone,” Iruka lies and puts down the frame. “Want some help?”

Naruto pauses by the fridge, arms laden with old wrappers and a hideously orange pair of boxer shorts. “What, really? You’re not mad?”

“I’m not your mother, Naruto; you’re a couple of hours away from the final round of the Chuunin Exam. My days of telling you how to live are over.”

The thing is, he never wants those days to end. There isn’t anything he’d like more than to burn this godforsaken place to the ground, sweep Naruto over his shoulder, and bring him home. Give him a place that’s clean and warm, with milk that hasn’t expired, and conversation at the kotatsu, and the sense of family they both crave. Greet him in the mornings and send him off with nice clothes, a packed lunch, and the knowledge that someone will be waiting for him when he comes back. Sip hot tea while stargazing on the roof, and bid him goodnight the way no one ever did. Invite him over to dinner the nights that Tamaru-sensei and his wife are there, introduce him to the man who helped shape Iruka's own path. There is so much to make up for, and if he thought it would help somehow, he’d offer it in a heartbeat.

But his eyes light on the photo next to Naruto’s bed, and he knows it’s too late. Only one of them wants for a family now.

Sighing, he turns a pointed look at the moldy agemochi on the table and can’t help but adding, “Although you might want to throw that out before it takes over.”

“Nope!” Naruto beams, tossing a pile of dirty laundry under what are probably dirty sheets. “You’re not my mother. I don’t have to do jack.”

He laughs. “For every smart-ass comment, I’m docking a dish at breakfast. You just lost yourself a plate of tamagoyaki.”

“But that’s my _favorite_!”

“I thought ramen was your favorite.”

“Iruka-senseeeeei, tamagoyaki is my favorite for _breakfast_ ,” Naruto wails, like he can’t believe Iruka hasn’t been paying attention all this time, and pulls off his sleeping cap to begin the hunt for clean pants. “You’re so mean to me.”

A grin steals over Iruka’s face. “Former teacher’s prerogative. Get your ass in gear; you can’t be late.”

“For breakfast?”

This is the boy who will someday be Hokage. “For your _match_.”

As quickly as a winter sunset, Naruto’s bright expression collapses, casting odd shadows across the swell of his cheeks. He makes an unsubtle turn, keeping his back to Iruka, and fiddles with nothing.

“Naruto?”

“I don’t think I’m gonna win.”

“What?” It’s been a couple of weeks since one of his students accidentally hit him in the back of the head with the broad side of a kunai during throwing practice. He was pretty sure there had been no lasting damage, but apparently he was wrong.

“I don’t think I’m gonna win,” Naruto says again, muted. “I’m going up against Neji. He’s a genius, y’know.”

Iruka blinks. “So?”

“So, I’m _not_.” Naruto locates a pair of blindingly orange pants and steps into each leg slowly, pulling them up with great reluctance. “He’s got that weird eye thing, right? He’ll see through all my techniques and beat the crap out of me without even breaking a sweat. He’s been training non-stop.”

“So have you,” Iruka points out. It’s a truth that deserves to be acknowledged; he’s never seen Naruto work so hard or focus so readily on one goal. Whoever the Pervy Sage is, he made good on the promise he’d given Naruto at the start: to help him become stronger. “Naruto, I didn’t see you for almost the entire month because you’ve been training so hard, and normally you hound me for ramen at least four times a _week_ —”

“Neji tried to kill Hinata—she’s his _cousin_! Do you think I’m going to be able to match a guy like that?”

He remembers Tamaru-sensei ducking into his classroom after hours, white-faced, whispering about how the Hyuuga heiress was felled during the preliminary round by her own blood. The words were rounded and hushed with shock, and Iruka probably should have felt more than a vague sense of resignation. He should have acted shocked, but he couldn’t muster up the pretense. No matter how many times he revisits the ideas of honor and familial bonds during his lessons, they’re not always going to stick—particularly not with those who need to know them most.

But Naruto has never met a challenge he couldn’t browbeat into a new ideology; Hyuuga Neji won't be any different.

“He’s gonna _cream_ me, Iruka-sensei, just like he did to Hinata. And my heart’s gonna explode all over the place and everyone’s gonna laugh. And then I’ll be back in the Academy, and Sakura-chan will probably hit me...”

“Naruto…” Despite the familiarity of wild, golden hair and the way the boy is dressed like an intentional insult to the eyes, Iruka doesn’t recognize the person in front of him.

The thing about Naruto is that he’s never been happy or sad a day in his life—Naruto is ecstatic or enraged, deeply depressed or absolutely manic, starving or so full he could burst. Before stabbing Iruka in the back, Mizuki used to complain that Naruto felt too loudly, too much. He was absolutely right. Inside that boy prowls a beast that easily toppled mountains and villages; it's not too much of a stretch for Naruto to feel on a bigger scale. The seal that made a prison out of a boy isn’t as strong as people seem to think, and the Nine-Tails slips through the bars more often than not, Iruka’s sure. So, how would anyone expect Naruto to behave other than in extremes?

If anything, it’s an honest way of living that Iruka can’t help but desperately envy; he’s certainly never allowed himself the luxury of feeling something to its full extent. Except once. Twice.

But even in his world of absolutes, Naruto has never once given up so easily.

Sighing, Iruka walks over and wraps his arm around thin shoulders, curving Naruto toward him and stopping just shy of contact to try and keep some semblance of propriety, and then he thinks, _fuck it_ , dragging Naruto in the rest of the way. Hesitantly, Naruto’s arms curl around him in return.

There's a rumble of connection, a slow rocking thing that drifts to the surface, bubbles up in Iruka’s chest, a tether swaying up from the depths to tangle them together, reaching out for the light Naruto seems to shine all the time. Iruka finds himself dragged down into it, submerged. _I know this one_ , it whispers, pleased, all warmth and recognition. _A flame split into nine tiers that burned the world during a failed audition._

Iruka ignores it and holds on a little tighter. “What’s this really about, Naruto?”

Nearly a minute passes in complete, weighted silence, and Iruka is about to step away when he feels the dig of fingers in his back.

“What if he’s right?”

“Who?” ‘He’ could be anyone, ranging from Uchiha Sasuke, who always seems to bring out the worst in Naruto, to the mysterious Pervy Sage, to Hatake Kakashi, who—if he’s somehow responsible for this—will be nothing but a conversation topic for people to wonder about over lunch.  _Whatever happened to the famed Copy-Nin? He disappeared without a trace the day of the Chuunin Exam final round. Even the ANBU are still baffled._

“Neji.” Kakashi gets to live another day. “He said you can’t escape destiny. He said—He said that I was always going to be… Iruka-sensei, I don’t want to just be the kid with a monster inside him forever, but what if that _is_ my destiny? What if that’s all I am?”

There are words he ought to be saying right about now, platitudes and assurances, but he can’t get them out through the clench of his teeth, and he has to close his eyes against the rage that rears up—a towering, writhing wall of blues and greens and blacks that itches to swallow the entire world whole. It fills him, rushes through his arteries to soak his insides and rides back through his veins to his heart, around, around, over, through, and he revels in it, is lit up with it, pushes it somewhere to gather so he might get his hands around it, wield it the way those who no longer believe would fear—

“Ow. _Ow_ , Iruka-sensei, leggo, you’re—too tight!”

Startled, Iruka huffs out a breath and opens his eyes. His fingers slowly relax where they grip Naruto’s shoulder and nape, and he exhales slowly, the anger ebbing.

“Jeez, Iruka-sensei, what’s the big ide—” Naruto begins, rolling his shoulders and attempting to shove back.

Iruka shakes his head and takes the reins of himself in a tight grip. “Naruto.”

As if struck, Naruto goes still, and Iruka takes the opportunity to step back a bit, hands staying upon shoulders already weighed down with an entire village’s cruel comments and expectations.

“Listen to your old sensei for a second, all right? No one’s destiny is set in stone—nothing is ever guaranteed, not in anything. Except for death. Is it possible that you could fail the exam and wind up back at the Academy? Yes, of course. There's no sense in lying about that. But do I think it’ll happen? No.”

A terrible hope fills Naruto’s eyes. “You don’t?”

“Naruto, do you remember the day I first took you out for ramen?”

“Yeah, you made me clean the Monument,” Naruto grumbles, and he’ll no doubt cling to that particular grudge for years and years.

“You wrote _fuck the Hokage_ across the faces _of_ the Hokages,” Iruka says flatly. “Yes, I made you clean the Monument.”

“Everyone knows that _you_ did the same thing when you were my age!”

“And I cleaned it up then, too. Can I continue?”

“Iruka-senseeeei!” Naruto grins a little, scratching at the back of his neck. “Wait, what you were talking about?”

Iruka rolls his eyes. “The first time we went out for ramen. Do you remember what you told me?”

If Iruka listens very carefully, he can hear the wheels turning beneath all that blond hair. After a moment, Naruto hazards, “... That pork ramen is my favorite...?”

“No, you dope. You told me you were going to become Hokage someday—the greatest the village has ever seen—and that everyone would recognize you for it.”

A bright grin washes over the shadows on Naruto’s face, and the black slashes across his cheeks deepen. “Oh, right! I meant it, too. I _am_ gonna be Hokage someday—the best one! My face is gonna be up on that mountain and if some kid writes all over it? I’m gonna _let him_.”

Iruka smiles. “Well, you’re still a ways off from being Hokage, but you’ve never once failed to make people notice you. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to ignore the doubters, and your team, and your own insecurities, and do what you do best.”

“What’s that?”

“Be you,” he says. “You are, after all, Konoha’s number one surprising ninja, aren’t you? Today, you’re going to remind them of it.”

Iruka spent years ignoring the pain of one little boy who only wanted to be seen, and he’ll never be fully absolved of that guilt, but the way Naruto looks up at him now—eyes wide and glossing over, catching the light to show a glimpse of something so much bigger than them both—makes him feel just a little bit lighter.

Without warning, a sudden orange and blond onslaught sends Iruka staggering back, and Naruto buries his face into Iruka’s chest, clutching him with what ought to be a terrifying strength. Smiling and a little short of breath, he cups the back of Naruto’s head tenderly, shielding him from the world for a moment, the way his own father used to when the nights were terrifying and something whispered to him from somewhere deep and dark.

“Thanks, Iruka-sensei,” Naruto whispers, and Iruka ignores the way his voice cracks on his name.

“I want you to promise me something, Naruto,” Iruka says quietly, nudging him a little to lift his head and hold his gaze. Hard to believe there was a time he could barely even look in his direction. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah,” Naruto says, attentive and earnest, as still as he’s ever been.

“I want you to promise me you’re going to go out there and kick the shit out of Hyuuga Neji.”

It takes a little while for Naruto’s shrieking laughter to subside and for the hearing to come back in Iruka’s left ear, but in the end they even pinky swear on it.

 

+

 

“Oh man, that was so good!”

Iruka tries to reply, but his gorge rises and he claps a hand over his mouth to stop it from going any further. He’ll let his students see a lot of things, up to and including death, but their teacher puking up like an amateur isn’t one of them. He never should have let Naruto talk him into ordering one of everything. For him, breakfast is usually a small bowl of miso, rice, and maybe some natto, but Naruto called him a wimp and, waving some salted fish around, shouted, “I BET I CAN EAT TWENTY MORE OF THESE THAN YOU!” And Iruka very well couldn’t insult the restaurant owner by sending back plates with food still on them.

“Thanks again for breakfast, Iruka-sensei!” Naruto pats his flat belly with a grin. “It was just enough!”

“Let me die,” Iruka mumbles, swallowing thickly.

Naruto laughs, swinging his arms wide, and his cheeks are flushed pink with good food and company. “I told you not to have that last bowl of okayu.”

“You said you’d make ten shadow clones and break into the kitchen if I didn’t. I wasn’t going to take any chances.” There is no universe in which Naruto wouldn’t make good on that threat.

“You’re so _easy_.”

Iruka sighs. “Put that next to my name on the Memorial Stone.”

Cackling like a loon, Naruto trots ahead, fingers linked behind his head as though he hasn’t a care in the world. Long gone and hard to find is the doubt and melancholy from earlier; this familiar Naruto walks with an easy confidence, utterly unstoppable.

Relief sings through him to see it, and Iruka smiles. And then closes his mouth tightly against a loaded belch.

He’s never eating okayu again.

The streets are much more congested than they were when he walked them earlier, the odd sky having given way beneath the sun to light the day with something powerful and bright. Iruka barely manages to slip by and between the crowds of civilians and shinobi, breakfast making him a little clumsy.

“Who _are_ all these people?” Naruto gazes around the street with wide, suspicious eyes, flitting from hitai-ate to tee-shirt to tee-shirt to hitai-ate, and attempting to decipher the symbols on them. “Did they really all come to watch the match?”

Iruka looks up.

The stadium bows to the sky like a tribute to a forgotten god, old but well-kept, with a new paint job to entice the uninitiated, and no doubt already filling up with those who want to watch their friends and compatriots move on to a new chapter in their lives... and civilians who just want the best seats. Iruka has never been comfortable with the Chuunin Exam as a spectator sport—it’s not something to enjoy; it’s something to endure. Civilians see it as entertainment instead of a rite of passage; none of them have any idea what the contestants have gone through to get there, what horrors and depravities they’ve seen and done, just so they might have the chance to protect those same people—the clueless, the outsiders, the _ungrateful_.

It’s a game to them, a fantasy, easily put away once the excitement wears off and it’s time to go home. If a single one of them knows what the slice of a kunai feels like, how poison forced into one’s mouth by a traitor can be sweet like candy, how someone with whom you’ve played, learned, grown up can reach into your mind and pull out all the things you fear and all the things you didn’t know to fear, he’d be very surprised.

_The sand of an unfamiliar shore mixes with the dirt that feeds the leaf._

Iruka ignores that.

“Ah!” Naruto stops and rears up on his toes, and Iruka slows to a stop next to him. “I think I just saw Kiba go in. It’s not fair that he got to use Akamaru during the prelims when _I_ couldn’t bring anything in.”

“The Inuzuka Clan’s ninken are considered tools, Naruto. You know that.”

Kicking a rock, Naruto shrugs. “I guess. But Akamaru’s awesome—he’s not just a tool. He has feelings and stuff. And just because you usually see animals with certain clans doesn’t mean other people can’t train them and use them...”

“I’m sure Kiba would be really glad to hear you think that about Akamaru,” Iruka says warmly. Then he squints. “Wait, is this about you not being able to bring snakes to class—”

“I could’ve trained them!” Naruto bends back and shakes his fist. “I could’ve had a _snake army_. If that weird bug guy—”

“Shino.”

“If _Shinoooo_ ,” Naruto draws out the name with an eye roll, “gets to use his creepy bugs, then I don’t see what a few snakes could’ve hurt.”

There is no way on God’s green earth he would’ve ever let Naruto through the door with snakes and he opens his mouth to say so, but stops, stymied, caught on the sight of a graceful hand reaching up to lightly slap a high, regal forehead.

They’re two points of color against a backdrop of shifting gray, the only things worth note in the entire village, possibly the world. The man, tall and almost too-sleekly built, bobs away from another attempt at his face, and the woman says something with a flat expression that makes him smirk and sling a pale arm over her shoulder. A slip of her hair—an otherwise mountain of an odd rust color that catches the light in such a way that Iruka sees spots dance before his eyes, and for a moment her skin flashes blue, green, then white, before settling again—brushes her companion’s arm, drawing attention to the subtle shift of muscle beneath his skin.

Iruka doesn’t recognize them—not their faces, or the odd clothes they wear—but he knows them, the way he knows the sound of waves sprawling over the shore. He knows the sound of their feet upon the sand as they run ahead of him, their legs longer, their bodies taller, older and still reaching out for him— _"Come on, buddy, you can run faster than that! Last one there’s a lame gull!”_ He knows the feel of their arms around him as they swing him up and into endless, shimmering blue, the splash of them beside him, the speed of them, the power they hold, and how every morning and night they come to him and whisper their thanks for him.

He knows them because he knows they love him. He knows them, despite not knowing them at all.

_They are yours, as I was hers, and they were hers, as I am yours._

He wants to call out to them, shout across the way, part the people whose faces and lives blur together and tell them… tell them…

Tell them what?

The woman says something, flicks her hand back and forth as if waving off a concern, smoke, something too trivial to be borne, and the man lowers his chin in agreement. His hair is a single strip of gray-blue flame down the center of his otherwise bald head. Together, they turn and walk toward the stadium, disappearing into the gray of the crowd, and Iruka presses his hand against his chest, where even through the flak vest he can feel the wild, unrestrained pounding of his heart.

“... sei… Iruka-sen _sei_!”

Something smacks him in the back of the head and he startles, whirling around to find Naruto giving him an odd look.

_Not yet._

“I’ve been calling your name forever, Iruka-sensei. Something wrong? Are you gonna puke?” A gleeful glint enters Naruto’s bright, blue eyes.

“I—” He rises a little on his toes to try and catch a glimpse of rust and white, but there’s nothing except the hustle of the crowd. He’s not crushingly disappointed. He’s not. “I’m fine. Sorry.”

“Your eyes went all weird for a second,” Naruto says, obviously unconvinced. “Is it the okayu? Are you allergic? I wouldn’t have made you eat it if I knew you’d die.”

“I’m not—” Iruka rolls his eyes and points in the direction of the stadium. “Are you ready?”

Naruto’s gaze trails the length of Iruka’s arm and comes to a stop on the stadium, and his pupils shrink a bit in awe and possibly a little fright. But he squares his shoulders, puffs out his chest, and shoves a thumbs-up into Iruka’s face.

“Yep! I made you a promise, Iruka-sensei, and I’m not gonna go back on it! I just wish you could see it happen.”

It’s possible he should feel guilty for making a former student swear to beat the stuffing out of another former student, but all he feels is annoyance that he won’t get to see it happen. “I tried to get the day off, but it’s all hands on deck at the Academy. I’ll be there for your formal ceremony when you make it to chuunin, though.”

Naruto’s eyes shine. “You really think I’m gonna beat Neji, don’t you?”

“I really do. And _when_ you beat him, try not to lord it over him too much.”

“I won’t.” Liar.

Iruka barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes, but he can’t stop the smile that breaks through. He holds his fist out. “Go remind them who you are.”

Grinning wide enough that Iruka’s own cheeks ache in sympathy, Naruto bumps his fist and then slams into his side, sketching a quick hug before taking off in the direction of the stadium. “Iruka-sensei, I won’t let you down!”

He’s still smiling about it half-way to the Academy, languid and warm from breakfast, from pride in a boy who has never once let him down when it’s counted, and he lets the feeling carry him the rest of the way, buoyed by a comfortable breeze that rouses the trees and whispers against the back of his neck.

Naruto will win—of this he has no doubt. Neji may have the technical proficiency expected of him as a member of the Hyuuga clan, but he doesn’t have the creativity or drive that Naruto has always (rightfully) boasted. Shinobi aren’t just measured by their skill, but by their quick thinking, stamina, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. If, for some reason, Naruto loses against Neji, it will be the fault of bias and nothing more.

And because his mind has never seen a worst case scenario it didn’t like, he immediately sees the Hokage and the council members smile blankly and say, “Better luck next time,” while Naruto stands before them and silently falls apart.

Swallowing down a growl, he whirls around and kicks a rock into the woods. He smirks, feeling better already, and waits to hear it land against another stone or maybe a pond—something that will make a lot of noise.

There’s no twang against stone or a splash. There’s nothing.

Well.

Without taking his eyes off the trees, he lets his hand drift down to rest on his hip, unlatching the pouch there with deft, silent movements and sliding his fingers inside to curl around the hilt of a kunai.

“I never understood the thing about stalking,” Iruka says loudly. “I know some shinobi like the challenge and the chase, but me? I’m a simple guy. I prefer the direct approach.”

Before that has a chance to sink in, he lets not one but six kunai fly into the woods. To make up for his lack of chakra, he’s spent years honing his aim. It’s never failed him.

But his kunai make no contact that he can detect; they whisper their way through the foliage and seemingly disappear. He exhales, rolling his shoulders to push out the tension there, the anticipation of a fight thrumming beneath his skin, and cocks his head, listening. He widens his stance, straightens his spine until it locks, and reaches into his side pouch again. His fingers find the familiar scrape of a tag and easily wrap one around the edge of a kunai, the pad of his thumb splitting beneath the kiss of the blade to activate the inscription, “ _Baku_.”

_An old feud is recalled with every burst of flame. Be wary of how you wield his weapon._

There’s a rustle in the woods, something too big and focused to be an animal or the wind, and it moves with concentrated grace, then stops. Whoever it is watches him, its stare palpable, indefinite chakra sliding up his spine with the care a lover might take to curl about his throat.

The breeze kicks up a little, parting the green and brown of the surrounding wood, and for a second he sees—

Iruka breathes out, the calm beat of his heart playing a different tempo—percussion born of hope.

White and red ceramic. Silver hair. He’d seen, just for a moment—

“Hound,” he breathes and releases the kunai, deactivates the exploding tag. “Is it—Is that you?”  
  
The greenery moves a bit, allowing him a glimpse of the mask, and he draws in a shaking breath, dropping his hand to his side, easily seen. Disarming. The fingers of his right hand curl into his palm, the phantom brush of a gloved hand dragging a shiver from beneath his shoulder blade.

Finally.

“You changed masks,” Iruka says, huffing a tremulous laugh. “Do I call you ‘Cat’ now? I don’t know that I can, not when you’ve always been… to me, you’ll always be… _God_ , I’ll call you whatever you want; it’s just so good to see you.”

Hound says nothing.

Iruka scratches his arm, searching for a sudden itch he can’t find. “I saw your ninken last night, and I’d hoped… I don’t know what I hoped.”

The white and red cat mask tilts beneath the cover of a dark hood, like a dog hearing an interesting sound for the first time. Iruka can’t imagine what Hound must see—a not particularly noteworthy man, barely a shinobi anymore, anchored to the town by dozens of little hands and red pen. Hardly the boy ready to jump from a mountain.

“Is it pathetic to have waited all this time to see you again?” Iruka asks quietly.  

The body beneath the dark cloak shifts, silent, and something rumbles deep within Iruka, a dark dread making itself known in his gut. As the moments tick by and no reply comes, realization dawns. Hound hadn’t faltered once in his words to Iruka years ago. He, whoever he was, had issues with silence.

This isn’t the reunion he’s been hoping for. The person behind that mask is not who he thinks it is at all. The vast, angry thing inside him builds and builds, its rage like a shifting wall of blue and black, for this is a deception against which he has no defense.

“... You’ve intruded on a personal moment, ANBU-san. I’d appreciate it if you left me to it.”

That ought to be the end of it—ANBU has no business in personal matters, and it certainly isn’t in their job description to sit here and watch Iruka make a fool out of himself—but the eyes of the cat bore into his for a beat longer, the shoulders beneath a dark cloak tense, as if the ANBU is about to move closer, and Iruka shivers in anticipation.

Another minute passes in silence, and because Iruka is a little stupid and a lot brave, he reactivates the _baku_ tag.

Exhaling, shoulders squared, Iruka takes a step toward the trees with his finger threaded through the kunai’s grip, when the faint pound of footsteps on the dirt road beats into existence.

“Sensei!”

He turns his head for a second, and down the way a bit Konohamaru waves both arms, a toothy grin stretched from cheek to cheek as he runs.

“You—” Iruka turns back to the trees, but the white and red of the cat mask, the crouching form beneath the cloak, is gone.

Heart pounding and breathing hard, Iruka stares at the tangle of green and brown, such an unlikely place to meet again, and... can’t stop the hysterical laugh that bubbles out of him. He ducks his head, cheeks hot, pressing an unsteady hand over his heart to calm it, and takes a few breaths to steady himself. He’s such an idiot.

“Sensei, do you know what time it is?” Konohamaru is one big, sly smile, and Iruka wants to strangle him with his scarf. “You’re gonna be la~ate! Tamaru-sensei felt you coming and wanted _me_ to tell _you_ that you’ll have to clap erasers like you did when you were my age if you’re late!”

Just what he needs today: Tamaru-sensei undermining him in front of the kids.

Sparing the woods one long, last look, Iruka sighs and opens his mouth to give the most diplomatic “you’re practically a fetus and you don’t know shit about shit, so shut your trap” of his career when—

“GET DOWN!” Iruka shouts, slinging an arm around Konohamaru’s waist and slamming the boy back against his chest, then dropping back to the ground to avoid the deadly blur of kunai hurtled their way. He rolls them over, gets a hand firmly on the ground, and launches them off the ground and away as another seven or eight kunai embed in the dirt where his neck had been.

He keeps a tight hold on Konohamaru, who breathes shallowly, high-pitched and terrified, trembling in the cage of his arms. Iruka exhales and becomes a shield, his old training surfacing— _"Rule Number 1 of Teaching: Your students are not just your students, but the future of Konoha. Protect them with your life."_ —with the familiarity of an old friend as he turns his body into a defensive stance, presenting a strong front to the sharp sights of whoever lurks under the cover of the wood. After a thought, he places his hand over Konohamaru’s mouth.

“Keep very quiet,” Iruka whispers. “Can you do that for me?”

“Mmph _mpph_ ,” Konohamaru gasps against his palm, struggling a little against his hold. He must realize the futility of it and gives up, slumping with a whimper.

Who knows how many have surrounded them, how many wear the ANBU disguise—it’s certainly more than the one in the cat mask. If Iruka weren’t so damn useless, he’d be able to pinpoint their chakra and make a better judgment call than the one he’s going to have to make, and soon.

“Pretty quick reflexes for a _chuunin teacher_ ,” someone calls. The words drip with sarcasm, each one spattering against Iruka’s face with the unerring accuracy of an open-handed slap.

Iruka smirks grimly and holds Konohamaru a little tighter. “Why, thank you. Are you here for the Exam? Because I think you might be a bit lost. The stadium’s back that way.” He jerks his head in the direction from which he came.

It wins him a chuckle. “Chakra-dead and funny. It’s my lucky day.”

“I aim to please,” Iruka says.

“Well, you certainly don’t aim to kill,” the nin says, audibly amused.

Iruka’s grin is born of an adrenaline rush. “Why don’t you come out and we’ll talk about it? I feel a little dumb having this conversation with a tree.”

“I’m pretty comfortable where I am, sensei, but I appreciate the offer.”

“Not a problem,” Iruka says pleasantly. “May I ask why you’re attacking me and a little boy without provocation?”

The nin laughs a little. “ _And_ polite. You must have to beat ‘em off with a stick. All right, let me cut to the chase here, sensei: we’re taking the boy.”

Konohamaru goes very still.

“Oh yeah?” Iruka tightens his arm a little, enough for Konohamaru to know that Iruka isn’t giving him up for anything. “I’m sorry, my friend, but I wouldn’t be a very good teacher if I let him go off with a stranger. I’m sure you understand.”

“I’ll make this easy, no fuss or muss: you hand over Sandaime’s grand-brat and we’ll let you go. Won’t even head over to your pretty little school around the corner, there. See, some of my buddies here were itching for a visit. They enjoy the smell of paint, the first attempts at tags hanging in the windows… and they _really_ enjoy the way those little legs part for a cock like they’re made for it.”

At this, there’s a chorus of raucous laughter all around them.

Konohamaru shrieks in pain at the sudden bite of Iruka’s fingers in the skin of his cheek, and Iruka has to force his hand to unclench. He sees red, then blue, then black, feels the responsibility for a hundred lives take up residence in his mouth like rows of thick, pointed teeth. The mysterious spokesperson, whoever he is, would have a hard time saying such unforgivable things with his throat ripped out.

_Take me up as your shield and sword and turn the waters red with his insolence._

The sudden flare of pain and the taste of blood in his mouth, the charge of lightning before the strike, startles him out of the rage, and he licks at the bite mark in the flesh of the inside of his cheek to anchor him.

“I hear Konoha’s youth are exceptionally accommodating,” the nin carols, and Iruka grits his teeth against another onslaught of anger. “I saw one of them this morning. A regular poindexter, all big round glasses and a tight, little mouth. I bet he wouldn’t put up much of a fight at all.”

“Mmmphmff rmmph!” Konohamaru thrashes against Iruka’s hold with enough anger that he entertains the thought of letting the boy go so he can avenge Udon’s honor.

“Stop it,” Iruka hisses, jerking Konohamaru once.

A distraction. He needs a distraction, something that will capture their attackers’ attention just long enough for him and Konohamaru to run the last quarter mile to the school where back-up will be waiting. Where the hell is the actual ANBU woodland patrol? 

“So, what’s it gonna be, sensei? The boy, or the boy and all the other pretty flowers of Konoha plucked and fucked? Because let me tell you, sensei: when my boys are done with them? They'll rip their pretty heads from their necks while I make you watch. What d’ya think, boys? Sound like a plan to you?”

The trees echo with the enthusiastic cries of soon to be dead men. 

_Let me into your arms, your legs, your mantle, and your and my and our hands will be the waves that crush them._

“Not yet,” Iruka murmurs, but he lets it rush into his core, spilling through his veins toward his heart to be sent into every part of him; a closed circuit—the cold, refreshing flow of something he can’t name—it’s not power, it’s not not power, but it’s all his. It rumbles, pleased, and even allows itself to be pushed down again once he’s had his fill. “Not yet.”

He’s never had the kind of chakra he ought, but he has enough to use for a quick getaway. Smoke and mirrors, traps and tags—those are his weapons, the tried and true foundation of his own shinobi way.

“Well, sensei?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” Iruka says, and throws four smoke bombs to the ground at his feet. The second he’s under cover, he uses his free hand to make the seals— _kemuri bunshin!_ —and spin a quick clone out of the smoke. The moment it’s fully realized and runs toward the trees as if fixing to attack, he launches himself and Konohamaru as far away as he can, as close to the school as one leap will take them, shoves his hand into his pouch, finds the activated kunai from before, and lets it fly.

There’s a pause, the world inhaling, and then one by one the trees shiver as balls of brilliant red and orange engulf them whole. The old trunks bloat obscenely, then burst, and the woods disappear into a cloud of ash and fire. It’s utterly devastating, and ultimately not enough.

He makes it one more leap before he feels his clone disperse.

“SENSEI!” Konohamaru screams into his palm, and Iruka barely manages to dodge the fist that flies at his face.

“You killed two of my men!” The nin—Sand, if the symbol on his hitai-ate is to be believed—growls.

“Oh no,” Iruka says flatly, jumping back to avoid another blow. “Two pedophiles shuffled off this mortal coil. I'm so sad.”

“Just for that, I’m going to _fuck_ the little Sarutobi brat until he _splits_ in two. I’m not usually about kids, but for you, sensei? I’ll make an exception. I don’t care what Orochimaru-sama wants!”

Orochimaru.

And suddenly he gets it. This isn’t a group of missing nin looking to cause mayhem by capturing the Hokage’s grandchild. This is an invasion, a systematic breaking of Konoha—to take Konohamaru is to bring their leader low, weaken his resolve. Iruka doesn’t know most of the story behind Orochimaru’s betrayal, but he’s gotten the gist of it over the years, enough to know the Exam is going to be sabotaged. Every single soul in that stadium is in danger.

Naruto—!

With a snarl, Iruka throws Konohamaru as far from him as he can and immediately goes after the sand nin, executing a damn near perfect roundhouse kick to the man’s head. It doesn’t connect, which isn’t surprising, but he doesn’t let that stop him from grabbing another kunai and slicing outward, once, twice, up, sideways, each attempt more vicious than the last. His form is perfect, honed over years spent trying to keep up with his peers as chakra made their techniques strong, and while it’s not nearly enough to land a blow, it’s got his opponent on the defensive. He’ll keep at it until he can’t, until he bleeds, until he falls—he’ll do whatever he must to keep this man away from Konohamaru and the Academy.

The sand nin is faster, his form ideal, and he lands a punch, a kick, a slice, forcing Iruka back, making him clumsy with pain and surprise. His demise comes on swift feet, a living blur of beige, and Iruka howls at the kunai that jams past the collar of his jacket and into the bone. He can feel the point of the blade scrape against it, severing something important, and god, it hurts. If it didn’t white his mind out every time he so much as breathes, he’d congratulate the sand nin on finding and exploiting such a vulnerable spot.

Ripping the blade out hurts more than it did going in, and the sand nin cackles a little bit at Iruka’s strangled scream.

“I’m running out of places to hit you, sensei,” the sand nin says and slams his fist right into Iruka’s collarbone.

The air in his lungs punches out of him and he staggers back, suddenly very cold. Shock. His body is going into shock, shutting down to regroup—Iruka forces himself past it to stick his hand into his pouch, but the sand nin grabs his wrist and jerks it until he hears and feels the wet snap of bone. A cry punches its way past Iruka’s teeth, and he stumbles a little.

“Pretty quick reflexes for a _c_ _huunin_ teacher,” the sand nin says again, grinning, and snags the kunai from Iruka’s other hand, drawing it back for a killing blow. “But not quick enough.”

“Still enough to get by,” Iruka gasps and lunges forward, slapping his hand over the nin’s eyes and activating his last tag—his last resort. A homemade tweak.

_Chishi bakufuu!_

The man’s head bursts like a dropped melon, and it’s the same colorful show as the trees from before. Blood and brain matter spatter against Iruka’s cheeks, but his face is so hot from the fight that it feels like water, a nothing that smells of burnt flesh and failure, and he trips backwards a little in his haste to get away from the slump of the body.

His collarbone and wrist remind him that he’s now down one fully-working arm. The pain radiates upward and curls into his elbow with a velvety-hot purr. He sucks in a breath and chokes a bit on the gathering of saliva in his mouth, nausea crackling along his jaw, and he spits it onto the ground. His visions swims.

Poison, he realizes weakly. The kunai had been tipped with poison.

Deep inside, something rages.

“S-Sensei,” Konohamaru whispers, and his voice trembles the way it ought not, not yet, not while he has years left in the Academy before he will know the taste of real fear. “What—”

They can’t stay here, not for another minute, another second. There will be more of this, and Iruka won’t be able to withstand another fight or another ten minutes. Getting Konohamaru out of here and to the school is now more than imperative; it’s everything.

“I happened to like that clone,” comes a voice from behind them. Iruka turns to see the sand nin, hitai-ate slung over his shoulder and tied beneath his arm like a token given to him by an admirer, and is nearly bowled over by the killing intent coming from the man.

Panting, Iruka glances over at Konohamaru, who’s rooted to the ground with fear and that same damned resolution Iruka’s seen in Naruto time and again. The brat is going to do something foolhardy any second. He’s going to get himself killed—

_Fortify your body with the armor she crafted herself from nothing. Take me up and end this._

The sand nin’s hands flash through a series of seals, too fast for Iruka to parse, but before the final gesture can be made a gray blur leaps through the air and knocks the man to the ground. Growls, yips, and screams intermingle as a familiar canine head shoots forward to take a vulnerable throat in its jaws.

He turns and scoops Konohamaru up again, running toward the Academy as fast as his burning, cramping legs will go. The ninken will buy them a little bit of time.

The Academy’s training grounds come into view, cresting the hill, all well-kept greens and browns, and Iruka wants to weep when he sees the ambling, frail bodies of his students as they run laps around the track. They should be inside working on their goddamn weapons essays, safe behind the walls where they know emergency safety drills and how to hide. Who the hell let them out?

Seated upon one of the benches that lines the track, Tamaru-sensei lifts a hand and smiles.

“Sensei, you’re late!” A girl calls, and the others all stop running to join in.

Something akin to horror drifts over Tamaru-sensei’s face as he takes in the scene. “Iruka-sensei—”

“GET INSIDE!” Iruka’s legs find a last kernel of energy and he pushes himself harder, faster, flailing his useless arm wildly. “GET BACK INSIDE NOW!”

A horrible, high-pitched yelp fills the air, the sound of defeat, but he can’t look back. He can’t he can’t he can’t. It would be a second’s worth of willful suicide, and to do so would dishonor the ninken’s sacrifice. _Hound, you saved me again._ Wrapped tightly around him, Konohamaru cries out.

Iruka skids over the dirt of the track and fumbles with the boy in his hold, nearly dropping Konohamaru altogether. As if summoned, Moegi and Udon rush to Iruka’s side and clamp onto his hips, weighing him down. He’s going to fall. “We’re under attack! Everybody get inside now!”

“D-Do we line up?” A boy—Mato Aota, his mind supplies vaguely—asks, eyes wide and filling with tears.

“RUN!” Iruka shouts, and bites back a wave of nausea, clapping a hand over his collarbone. His fingers slip in the blood, a veritable tide. His mind is swimming, his tongue thick with dizziness, and whatever that kunai had been tipped with paints a terrifying black swirl across the stretch of his vision. “GET TO THE TUNNELS! F-FIND YOUR SAFETY BUDDY AND WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS!”

“You heard Iruka-sensei! Run to the tunnels as fast as you—” Tamaru-sensei makes to step forward, but he’s too old, too slow to stop the kunoichi that comes at him from behind and jams her kunai into the soft skin of his throat. He gurgles as blood spurts from the site like a dam break. Students scream in horror. One boy stumbles back and falls to the ground.

The air becomes rank with fear and urine, and Iruka sucks in a shuddering breath as the sand nin jerks her kunai out of Tamaru-sensei’s throat and pushes his body down like he’s nothing.

He’d been in his own classroom not five minutes, trembling in excitement and fear and with the crazy thought that maybe he finally found his place in the world, when the door slid open and a familiar face beset by time poked in. Tamaru-sensei wasn’t as frightening as he was when Iruka was ten—there were too many laugh lines and wrinkles to fear—but he still had that grave air about him as he came in and shook Iruka’s hand. _“I always knew you’d find your path. I just wish that path hadn’t been paved with thumbtacks. Umino Iruka-sensei… well, things are going to get very interesting, don’t you think?”_

They would go out for drinks at the end of the day and swap horror stories and lesson plans, and once a month Iruka would open the door to his empty apartment and find a bottle of good sake and company on the other side; Tamaru-sensei and his wife Naoko would make themselves at home while dinner finished cooking, and wouldn't leave until dawn began to crest over the trees. It tickled Tamaru-sensei to no end that Naruto, the bane of the Academy, became Iruka’s greatest triumph, and he always said that someday all of them—Iruka, Tamaru-sensei, Naoko-san, and Naruto—would be seated at the kotatsu, warm from a meal and good humor, and feel like a family.

A family.

Iruka drops to a knee, felled hard by the sludge in his veins, and can’t look away.

“Ir...ka…” The light in those milky eyes, the same one that sparked whenever Iruka successfully made a clone for a moment, held a henge, made it through the day without fucking up, asked him and his wife back the next week over the holidays, fades slowly away until there’s nothing to show a kind, fair soul had ever taken residence there.

Wakahisa Tamaru-sensei dies at the feet of the smirking nin who killed him like a coward, in front of the children he taught to respect everyone—including their enemies. In front of Iruka, who wanted a family and had one all along.

_Let me in. Give voice to your birthright. Grant me permission._

“Tamaru-sensei,” Moegi sobs, and Iruka can’t even find the words to comfort her.

There’s a displacement of air, a sinister hiss as sand gathers and rears around them, forming into soldiers all bearing the insignia of Sunagakure. The kunoichi who killed Tamaru-sensei grins at Iruka and licks the blood off the edge of the kunai.

He’s going to kill her.

He’s going to kill them all.

_Grant me permission!_

“You don’t look so hot,” she sneers, and steps aside to let the sand nin—the one from the woods—step forward. His uniform is ripped in several places, spattered with blood and dirt, and his pleasantly handsome face is contorted into something monstrous.

“I told you, sensei,” the sand nin murmurs, breathless. “Either hand over the Sarutobi heir or I make you watch.”

At the jerk of the sand nin’s head, another of the soldiers moves with unfathomable speed, snatching up little Mato Aota, who shrieks in terror. A gloved hand sinks into Aota’s hair, grips hard, and pulls the boy’s head clean from his shoulders, the bone twisting and snapping free, trailing dura mater and nerves like the tails on a hanging token.

Iruka stares, rooted to the spot, and no matter how hard he tries to goad his limbs into moving, to reach out, to find a rock or grab hold of the dirt and do something, he can’t. The poison has made him a prisoner in his own rigid body, and inside, he screams loud enough to drown out everything but the anger, the vastness, the power.

Inside, deep, deep, deep, deeper still, in the blackness where the sun has no power, something shifts.

“Aota-kun,” Konohamaru whispers, clutching at his jacket.

_Now._

“That’s two,” the sand nin says with a snicker, and the other nin tosses Aota's body to the ground like so much trash. One of the kids retches. “Where’s your line, sensei? You think I won’t find it? I’ll have my soldiers paint this place red with their innocence, every single one, unless you give me the boy.”

There is a woman whose voice rolls over him like a never ending song to which he doesn't know the words—

“Is he even listening? I think he’s ignoring you, taichou. Or he’s just about dead,” the kunoichi sneers.

—and yet he knows it well, knows the feel of flesh melting into scales, of a body once claimed and discarded like old clothes—

The skin of his arms shivers as something washes down like water, beginning with one good link and multiplying, rippling over him to cover his shoulders, his chest, the vulnerable place where his throat meets his jaw, and up still over his cheek. He tilts his head back and shudders into its strong, weightless embrace.

_What say you, clever child?_

The dark, insidious killer in his veins is easily washed away, and he slowly gets to his feet as if he were born to do nothing else. Beneath the soles of his sandals is an unsteady, mistrustful earth, but he knows what it used to be—stone and stone and stone, eons before it was crushed to silt and soil and expelled from his shores. It shall be again, and he breathes out slowly, feels it rush from him in great sluices, pooling at his feet and spreading fast—

“S-Sensei!” Udon cries, releasing him, his shoes wet.

—and he fills every crevice, every crack, until the world is awash with him, them, and together they rise and rise. He’s unstoppable, unfathomable, and in him lies the world’s first secrets, the deepest depths, and he closes his eyes and tilts his chin up to wake them.

“I’ll give you one more chance, sensei, to hand over the boy. What’s it gonna be? Yes or no?”

_Yes or no?_

Fact and logic crumble at his feet, and dark things rouse from dark corners and invade his flesh, his bones, his very marrow.

_You are my continuation. I have given myself to you, so you must never turn your back on the—_

“Yes.”

 

+

 

Filled with a hollow sense of betrayal, Konohamaru lets go of Iruka-sensei and steps back, soaked in Iruka-sensei’s blood, in something wet and cold, and coughs around a sob that sticks in his throat.

Yes. He said _yes_. Iruka-sensei wasn’t supposed to give him up so easily, or even at all. He just sat there and watched as Aota-kun died. Teachers are supposed to fight for their students, even if it means they might die. Asuma said so, and Asuma would never lie—not about something like that.

Grandpa is going to be so upset. And Naruto-niichan…

“I told you I’d find your line, sensei,” the ninja says with a scary grin, and takes a step forward.

A large hand reaches out and grabs Konohamaru’s scarf, which is dirty from the fight before, and Konohamaru lifts his hands to push against it, struggling as best as he can—kicking and scratching, the way Asuma showed him. _Always fight, even if it won’t do anything._ He will. He won't ever give in. He hopes someone's still alive to tell Naruto-niichan that he was a true shinobi right up until the very end.

“I knew you’d say yes.”

Moegi screams, and the sand nin lifts his other hand to hit her, but something wraps around his wrist and stops it. It looks like a shiny rope, but it’s not solid, not really. It shifts and flows like a river, blue and green and brown and black, and it splashes a little against Konohamaru’s lips. It’s salty. It’s _water_ —!

The sand nin glances up and Konohamaru does too.

It hurts to look for too long, his eyes burning as if were staring into the sun. It's nothing like anything he's ever imagined; it's too big, too  _much_ , even though it looks like just a regular guy. But it can't be. Not with undone black hair bleeding into a shimmery, billowy thing that looks like a waterfall suspended in time. Not with scales on its face and body, shining like armor out of the stories grandpa used to tell him before bed. Not with the scar that weird gold color.

Not with those scary, swirling blue eyes. 

 _“Whoever said,”_ the thing with Iruka-sensei's face says to the sand nin, _“I was talking to you?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expect part 2 to be 580 million words and two films jfc.
> 
> Some might find the attack on Iruka on his way to the Academy jarring, or sudden--that was my intent. The invasion of Konoha was supposed to come out of nowhere, without any warning (for those who weren't looking for such signs--unlike, say, Kakashi). If you thought it should have come with recognizable signs, you've probably never been 100% surprised by anything. 
> 
> Once again, this is completely unbeta'd, so any and all mistakes are my own. Feel free to [find me on tumblr](http://rcmclachlan.tumblr.com) and yell at me about it.


	5. Hadal (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV shift! The tone of this chapter is a little less poetic and a little more casual, and as such it was one of the hardest things I've ever written. Kakashi's mind is not an easy thing to navigate and my struggles to portray him definitely shows in my writing (which is why it took 3 months for me to update this dumb thing).
> 
> This chapter takes place around the same time as the events in the second half of Hadal (part 1)—they run (almost) concurrently. This is also where the "AU" in "canon AU" begins to weigh heavily on the story, so be aware that I will be taking great liberties with the established canon from here on out.
> 
> A million and one thanks to [FlameSkimmer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FlameSkimmer/pseuds/FlameSkimmer) for beta-ing this beast of a chapter. Your suggestions and comments were invaluable. <3
> 
> Also, another million and one thanks to [Alestar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/pseuds/alestar) for looking at the original draft of Hadal (part 2) and making me see how and why it didn't work. It would've been a mess without you. <3

_I dreamt about you again._

_We were walking on sand, but not the kind you'd probably find in Sunagakure—that rough, red kind. I saw it in a picture of Suna when I was in the Academy. This was nothing like that. This felt different. Softer, I guess. It was practically white and, I don't know, cool, even after being under the sun all day. It felt like it knew us. Like we'd walked on it before. It would squeak under our feet and you said it was singing to us, and then you grabbed my hand and started running to see if the song would get faster. You looked like an idiot—the wind kept blowing your hair everywhere and you were laughing so hard I thought you were gonna puke. I've never heard you laugh like that. You didn't let go of my hand, not once, not even when we stopped—you just held it tighter. I… I liked it._

_We walked to the end of the beach, and all the grass coming out of the sand was on fire, and there were these cliffs as white as bone, and right at the base of them was a cove, deep enough that all sorts of things were living in it, and we watched a bunch of creatures I've never seen before scuttle and swim around. When we walked into the water, they all came and clustered around my feet. They completely avoided you, though. Maybe they knew you weren't someone to mess around with. You were kind of put out about it, and I…_

_I…_

_… I pushed up against you, and you hugged me for a really long time. You smelled good, wild, a bit like a thunderstorm, that sharp, buzzy feeling in your nose, and how the hair on your arms stand up, and I…_

_I kind of feel like you'd be weirded out by this, but I couldn't help it. I can't help what I dream._

_I… I reached up and pulled off your mask, but your face wasn't a face. It was a ball of lightning. Just really bright, really loud, almost squeaky… like a ton of birds chirping all at once or something, I don't know. The ocean thought it was beautiful. The—well, the ocean in my dreams has thoughts and feelings, and it talks to me. It's weird, I know. And… and sometimes, when I'm awake, I hear it. Does that make me crazy? I think I'm going crazy, sometimes. What would you do, if you heard something no one else could hear, and it whispered to you about things you actually don't know about? Not like a ghost—ghosts are on the outside. This comes… it comes from inside me. It's so big. Have you ever felt something big inside you?_

_… Oh my god, I just realized how that sounded, shut up._

_Anyway, your face was lightning, but it was still you so I... I kissed you. You put your arms around me—your hand was in my hair, but my hair was the ocean, and it rose up and wrapped around us. Kept us safe. But your lightning lit everything up, and it was running through the water, through my body, and back into yours. A closed loop. It was… it was electrifying._

_I'm sorry. That was awful. I couldn't resist. I've got a terrible sense of humor. You'd probably hate it. I wish—_

_… I wish…_

_Jeez, I really am pathetic, huh? Coming here like this, hoping you'll be here waiting for me. I doubt you remember me at all, or maybe every once in a while you stop what you're doing and go, "I wonder what happened to that dumb, chakra-dead nobody who almost threw himself off a mountain." I don't blame you. I wouldn't remember me, either._

_..._

_The Chuunin Exam final round is tomorrow. I've failed the Exam twice before, you know. This is the furthest I've ever gotten and I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make chuunin. I wish you were gonna be there. Maybe you will be. I wouldn't even know, though, would I? There are gonna be ten-thousand people in the stadium, and you could be any of them. Maybe you'll see me, wherever you are._

_Oh! I saw that dog again today, the gray one that looks a little like a wolf. It reminds me of you, you know, because it's the same color as your hair. I finally told Genma about it, but he doesn't really believe me, because he's a_ jerk _. I told him it could be yours. Maybe it really is; maybe you're looking after me. I wish you'd just come find me. We wouldn't have to talk or anything. I just want to see that you're okay. Being ANBU is really dangerous. What if you go on a mission and die? I'd never know._

_No, I'd know. Somehow, I'd know. I'd feel it._

_…_

_Well, I'd better get home. The gates are gonna close soon and I need to be up early. I'm going to make chuunin, and then someday I'll make jounin. Genma's already half-way there… he's tokubetsu now. Happened last week. I guess those dumb senbon he's always chewing really are good for something after all. All I have to do is keep up. I'm good with traps and tags, and I could probably make tokubetsu if I work hard enough. And after that, I'll make full jounin, and then I'll make ANBU, and then you'll_ have _to see me._

_All right, I'm leaving for real now. Wish me luck, Hound. I'll be back to talk to you soon. Maybe I'll see you tonight on our beach, and the sand will sing to us again._

 

+

 

With nobody's eyes on him, Kakashi takes his leave from the arena, pauses in the bottom of the stairwell, and breathes out slowly.

The roar of the audience is like thunder, a metallic rumble of bloodlust and misguided excitement, and it shakes the very walls and pillars of the stadium. The surge in momentum starts softly, almost silently, until it's a living force all its own: _U-chi-ha! U-chi-ha!_

He snorts. Seems like only yesterday they were shouting _Ha-ta-ke! Ha-ta-ke!_ at a six-year old in a too-big hitai-ate going up against a teenager from Iwagakure. But for the right name? They'll cheer for anyone.

Thanks to the family name _U-chi-ha_ Sasuke carries like a dead bird around his neck, the chuunin promotion is no doubt already a guarantee in the eyes of the Council. This past month of training probably wasn't even necessary. Neither of those old fools remembers what it's like for a young body to push itself beyond reasonable limits, to watch a child with desperation and hunger in their eyes bleed for approval, for validation, to give everything there is and have it still not be enough. It's easy to throw children to the mercy of the crowd, to the enemies of Konoha, while they stay tucked away behind thick walls, wards, and guards. They would see Sasuke become complacent—ride the power of the Uchiha name, lest he become something they can't commodify.

Something twinges in his back and, grunting, he rolls his shoulders to try and calm it down. In the name of perfection, Sasuke was relentless—no downtime had been allowed the entire month. Normally he'd applaud such determination and focus, but a moratorium had been placed on _Icha Icha_ , and no man should be forced to go without for so long. It had been a test of willpower, one he's ashamed to admit he almost failed a few times.

But with all his considerable attention locked on one stone-cold brat, other things escaped him. Important things.

Well, one thing.

He scratches at an itch that lingers nowhere in particular and cuts a quick glance left and right. The stairwell is empty enough to take a moment, to close his eyes, and—

_run and run and run and run and the world is endless so big so much smells and sounds and texture the dark parts not so dark the light parts almost too bright rushing by him like wind and he runs and runs and runs and runs jumps and flies and soars over rocks and grass and dirt and leaves over dead things and new things past trees and bushes and saplings and green and he runs and runs and runs and runs._

_He is a hunter, he is a warrior, but he is first and foremost obedient and there is a boy who is a man who is a dream who is a savior in need of him and he will always answer. Always, always, always_ — _that is his purpose, that is his task._

_He runs and runs and runs and the world is so big, so much.  But it begins and ends with the smell of salt and laughter and the cold air atop a mountain and he inhales the scent and moves to follow._

Coming back isn’t nearly as easy as slipping out—he’s never quite managed to stick the landing—so he slams back into his body with all the grace of a pig attempting to fly. He had seen it once in Cloud Country. It wasn't pretty.

The world around him is thrust into crystal clarity, and he rolls his shoulders and makes for the stairs. Before he takes the first one, he waits and waits, and—there it is, that familiar feeling of hovering just outside himself, the mind of one fighting with the other, and an odd sort of detachment is kicked up in the dust from the melee. It sometimes takes him a bit to remember how to walk upright, to speak in sentences instead of relying on the guttural vibrations of growls and piercing whine. But he doesn't have time for that now, not with Sasuke facing off against someone who comes with his own warning label—no one carves 'love' into their fucking forehead for kicks.

Despite its tendency to sometimes linger for hours like a bad hangover, the feeling gives way beneath a pulse of chakra, and he allows himself a minute to revel in the feel of his skin, his heartbeat, the burble of greeting from his chakra pathways. He settles back into himself with a satisfied hum and the last thing to return to him is a ten-year old warmth that lingers in the leather of his gloves.

He breathes out, satisfied, and begins the long climb up the stairs.

The hound is running, as it should be, as it always is. It knows its duty and he trusts it to do it well—the way he trusts his own hands to rip lightning from the sky and his stolen eye to eke out a person's secrets at his say-so.

It wasn't easy to conjure the mutt all those years ago, not when he was already juggling contracts with eight ninken—but unlike the pack, this is a lone runner, one made solely from himself. It would've been easier to sign another contract with another ninken, but this was personal. This was separate. Sure, every so often he winds up in the hospital for a few days due to the toll it takes on his reserves, but it _works_. The hound has not once failed in its one directive.

He glances down at his hand, rubbing his thumb over the webbing between his fingers and chasing the phantom press of a palm against his.

It's been ten years, and the warmth of a body tucked against his still lingers. Sometimes, on the rare nights when his ghosts don't appear and it's simply him alone in the dark, in his empty bed, he closes his eyes and drags the memory to the forefront—the feel of fingers tangled with his own, kind words murmured into his arm, the burn of want searing his ribs and threatening to turn him to ash.

Preventing a boy from jumping off a mountain should have been the end of it, the absolute limit of his assignment as ANBU; he should've left the kid there to reflect upon what would have been a really poor life choice, but… instead, he looked underneath the underneath, and patted the space at his side so the boy—poor, chakra-dead nobody who stared at his mask without fear and told him to be anyone he wanted—might sit with him for a while. The boy (who blushed prettily at his clumsy touches) had pressed against him with the kind of confidence no one should have, as though they were puzzle pieces slotting together. The boy who didn't care about his name or rank or face or his many, many valuable skills, but wanted everything else.

That should have been the end of it. A surrogate stalker is more than pushing it.   

_"You're not a monster. You're my friend. You're mine, and I'll never forget you."_

Problem is, Kakashi never forgot, either. The intriguing boy didn't just grow up; he shattered like glass under Kakashi's skin, a million shards of Umino Iruka—each one a new thing to learn, a new facet. Almost a decade later Kakashi is still finding new pieces.

He'll never be rid of him, not when he sees Iruka putting his students through their paces on the training field with a wide, proud smile on his face; when he passes Iruka in the market talking to each vendor like an old friend; when he stands before the Mission Desk and suffers Iruka's dissatisfaction with his reports because apparently there's a correlation between legible handwriting and one's worth as a shinobi; when he watches Iruka tuck the boy who holds the Nine-Tails under his arm like an older brother would and treat him to a feast of kings.

When he sees Iruka stop suddenly on the street and turn to stare up with visible longing at the Monument, and is suddenly a boy himself, again, terrified and covetous of the easy acceptance and friendship of a stranger.

And after ten years—

After.

After the match, after he watches Sasuke walk out of the arena with shoulders held just a bit lower under the weight of a new rank, Kakashi will man up—slip past the wards around a sparsely-furnished apartment, come up quietly to the Memorial Stone in the hush before night falls, ask for a private audience in the Mission Room, slide open the door to a classroom empty of all but one—and explain everything.

Pausing on the stairs, Kakashi allows himself a moment to imagine it—to stand before Iruka and strip the Hound away until all that is left is Hatake Kakashi. What would Iruka do upon discovering the Hound's identity? Would those dark eyes shutter with disappointment, the proverbial doors slamming shut on him forever? Would his lips part with sheer disgust, with anger? Or worse—would there be no reaction at all? It's been a few years since Iruka last went to the Monument in hopes of finding him. Maybe he's given up altogether. Maybe he doesn't care anymore. Iruka is a good shinobi, trained in the art of facial control; if he were disappointed, he'd hardly show it. He'd probably prolong the agony by turning Kakashi down gently, all pleasant smiles and painfully kind platitudes, and then laugh about it over drinks with Genma.

Kakashi rubs at his throat, swallowing hard. It's not like it'd be much of a stretch. He is, after all, the one who made the man actually pull out his own hair in frustration one time because Kakashi wrote a report in blood on a large leaf. And who could possibly forget his star turn as the cruel new mentor, reminding Iruka that Naruto was no longer his concern—and then rubbing salt in that particularly open wound by practically shouting it in front of the Hokage and the entirety of the jounin squad.

Chances are, he'll crash and burn, and the moment he does will be the moment the warmth that clings to his fingers fades away forever.

But…

But there's a sliver of possibility that instead of disgust and anger, there will be a smile breaking like a sunrise, the elegant slice of a scar scrunching with long-awaited resolution, and nimble fingers dragging his mask down…

Something bright and almost painful thrills beneath his breast at the thought of it, and his hands clench into fists, helpless and shaking with a vicious need. That boy returned to the mountain night after night for years, and it was all Kakashi could do to remain in the shadows, to not toss the damn Hound mask over the edge and take a taste for himself. To do it now, with hands and a tongue that know what they're doing...

He drums his fingers against the railing.

For that sliver, he'll do it. He'll do anything. Everything.

The worst that can happen is his heart will be irreparably broken.

By the time he reaches the top of the stairs, the air is fat and indolent with the chatter of the crowd—

_"I bet the Uchiha will win."_

_"Mommy, I want to be a ninja!"_

_"I can't believe the monster kid was able to beat one of the Hyuuga."_

_"My landlord's a rotten bastard. He's doubled the rent again, but he's done nothing to fix the water problem!"_

_"No, my cousin said the entire town just went up in smoke. One second it was there, and the next it was ash."_

_"I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna ask him out. Don't laugh! I really am!"_

_"Hundred ryo says the Uchiha bites it in the first ten minutes."_

_"You're an idiot; I'll take that bet!"_

—but above it all is a familiar voice shouting about the Vitality of Youth, followed by general grumbling and confusion, which means he's at least in the right place. He turns the corner, dragging the tips of his fingers over the stone of the wall, and just as he enters the seating section a piercing cry cuts through the din of the stadium like the slash of a blade, a graceful shadow swooping over the arena.

Once upon a time, before he had come to wear a mask over a mask and occasionally threw away his humanity with the blessing of his Hokage, he had been given a C-rank mission to escort a visiting ambassador back to Kirigakure. The journey had been uneventful—he was glad for the fabric stretched over his face, hiding what was no doubt a perpetually bored expression—until a high-pitched war cry rent the air and had him drawing chakra into his hand before his charge could blink.

"What are you doing?!" The ambassador had demanded, unimpressed by such quick reflex and skill. "You damn nin and your hair triggers. Don't you know anything? _Look_."

He'd followed the man's withered finger to where it pointed to a grand spectacle in the sky. As if aware of their gazes, the creature stretched itself wide, as if set to exploit the wind itself. Rapt, he could do nothing but stare as it pulled back, arched, posed like in one of the paintings in the Sandaime's office, silhouetted by the sky, which—in the dying sun—had looked as if it were on fire.

It had let out another screech, and the sound had been a living force all its own that had knocked the wind from his lungs and rattled around in between his ribs until it settled, a pebble made of ocean air and majesty. For a moment, a blip in time that arranged itself as a fixed point, he had thought about answering—clawing down the mask, opening up his mouth, and calling back to it.

Instead, he watched it disappear into blinding orange and gold, and asked quietly, "What is it?"

"That's an albatross, my boy."

"An albatross." Even the name was grand. "It's big."

"And rare," the ambassador said. "I've lived here all my life and I've never seen one. It must be for you."

His heartbeat became tangled up in the great bird's cry, and the smell of the ocean was so powerful that it was painful—even through the mask, the flesh on the inside of his nose burned with salt and the implication of a terrible power.

"Me?"

"An albatross is a sign of bad luck." If it had been said by anyone else, Kakashi would have ignored it, but the ambassador owed him nothing—not animosity or friendship. The gravity in his words  had been genuinely meant. "But even at your age, you're already a chuunin. You'll probably handle it just fine."

Just fine.

Someday, someone—probably a fucking eight-year old genin from Sound, with his luck—is going to get in a lucky shot and Kakashi will find himself standing at the edge of the afterlife while Obito and Rin and Minato-sensei and who knows how many others judge him for how _not fine_ he handled things.

Now, he watches the bird pull back over the stadium, its wings reaching endlessly outward, catching the wind and soaring impossibly high as a gilded god might depart the earth.

Breathing out, he slowly descends the stairs to where Sakura sits and Gai stands. Next to them, perched upon a pair of crutches, Rock Lee stares down at the arena with a single-mindedness far beyond that of a genin. The tight, beaten set of the boy's shoulders belies a great injustice; he's the very picture of a contender cut down in his prime.

If he'd knocked himself out of the game as early as Rock Lee had against Gaara of the Sand, Kakashi would… probably torment himself by watching this match, too. Poor kid.

He moves to take the last couple of stairs, and Gai turns, lifting a hand and flashing a smile in greeting. Kakashi nods and waves Gai's attention back toward the arena.

"Well now," muses a voice to his left. "An albatross."

Kakashi stops, and the first thing he sees is the hair—pounds and pounds of a mousy brown held precariously by a small contraption that could probably double as a weapon if one were really creative. Normally he'd pay no mind to something as trivial as someone's hair, but no one’s carting around that kind of mop unless they’re going to use it. He's not sure what it's hiding; possibly a weapon. Possibly another person. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’s ever seen; it wouldn’t even make the top ten. But for it to be here on all days—when everyone’s already on edge thanks to the sandy rub of tension coming from the field—just makes him sigh. This is the last thing he needs right now.

The mound of hair turns, revealing a woman's face, and she gives him a bland smile. "You probably don't see many of those in such a land-locked place, huh? I guess that just means I'm where I'm supposed to be."

Aside from the hair, the rest of her isn't anything to write home about—she isn't as classically beautiful as Kurenai or sunny and bright like Rin had been. She's plain—he'd even go so far as utterly non-descript, but there is something striking about her, the way the skin stretched over her chest and lips seems to shimmer and almost vibrate. Beneath its cover, the Sharingan throbs with the need to crack her open and pull from her every secret she's ever hidden.

She's dishwater. Dull. Unremarkable. So much so that he's surprised Gai hasn't caught on yet—it's very unlike him to have missed something so glaringly obvious. No one is _that_ invisible. Kakashi's going to have a pleasant talk with whoever's on gate watch rotation, because someone dropped the ball when they let her in.

Then her words hit him. _Land-locked_. A throwaway descriptor, but a telling one. She's from Water Country—maybe not Kirigakure exactly, but no doubt one of the islands. Interesting. No one from Kirigakure hasn't competed in the Chuunin Exams for a few years, which means she has no actual reason to be in Konoha.

As if attuned to Kakashi's inner musings, Gai looks up at him in askance and then slowly drags his attention to the woman. Thick eyebrows lift in interest and not a little confusion, and Gai opens his mouth as if to call up to him and interrupt with loud pleasantry as a guise for threat assessment. Kakashi gives a minute shake of his head, forestalling it, and with a frown Gai turns his back, but the hard line to his shoulders belies such an easy surrender. He'll be listening, and waiting.  

Seated next to Gai is Sakura, still and dense as stone, her shoulders tight with something cold and worrisome, as if the very air were crushing her down into something sharp and terrible. Her gaze is glued to where it usually is.

This past month must have been hard for her to bear; he knows what it's like to be left behind while one's teammates are gone. Not for the first time, a tiny, mottled thing feasts upon his heart, its clawed hands scrabbling at his ribs, and he welcomes the return of his old friend, Guilt. He should have been a better teacher, should have found a way to adapt his methods to suit her. But with no special skills—not like Sasuke, with the Sharingan, or Naruto, with the deep reserves of the Nine-Tails' chakra—he'd been at a loss as to what he was supposed to do with her. He'd sent her into the prelims with little more than a handful of kunai and a prayer.

She deserved better.   

"That's not a very nice thing to say about the village you've been allowed to visit," Kakashi points out, picking up the thread of the conversation and pushing the words to the roof of his mouth until they're molded into something cheerful, a forge so perfect that even Morino Ibiki would have difficulty finding the lie.

Shrugging, she pulls a skewer of goma dango out of seemingly nowhere and sinks her teeth around the top dumpling. After chewing for a moment, she pauses and lifts the skewer to study the dango with a curious lift to her brows. "Huh."

The albatross gives one last screech before it dives into the sky, riding upon streams of endless blue and white and heading for the horizon where a wall of dark, ominous clouds lingers.

"Bad luck," Kakashi murmurs, the weight of the old ambassador's words heavy, and he watches it go.

"Only if you kill it," the woman says, an odd lilt to her voice.

Her hair glints in the sunlight, blinding, and for a second her skin looks green, then blue, then black, until the spots dancing before his eye settle and it's pale again.

"That was some entrance you made," she says.

He can feel the corner of his eye crinkle, and beneath the cover of his mask his tongue presses almost painfully into the point of one of his canines. "Always important to have the crowd on your side, wouldn't you say?"

Terrifying shinobi have quailed under his scrutiny, but she just smiles and says, "No offense meant." She turns back to the arena, where Genma instructs both boys to meet in the center. "Did you grow up here?"

"I did."

"You've never lived anywhere else?"

"Nope." It says as much in the Bingo Books. If she thinks she's scoring some sweet tidbit to use against him—

But her eyebrows lift in what must be surprise, and she subsides. "Hm." She gestures to the arena. "So, what determines the outcome of the match? Will they fight to the death?"

Like a gathering swarm of bees, sand pours out of Gaara's gourd and hovers around him, a writhing, living shield. He lifts a hand to his head and says something, but it's so soft that his lips barely move, nothing Kakashi can read. "Probably."

She bites into the second dango and delicately slides it off the skewer with her teeth. "If you don't mind me saying, your boy has some interesting hair."

He chuckles a little. "I don't think you have room to cast stones with a mop like yours."

She smiles and turns her face toward him a little, but her eyes remain on the arena with a sort of vague interest. "What's that saying? 'All my strength's in my hair'?"

"Something like that," Kakashi agrees. He's never heard that in his life. "That a popular adage where you're from?"

"Adages aren't really a thing where I'm from."

If he had it in him to be subtle, he would be, but something about her puts his teeth on edge, makes his blood burn. Not many have the ability to get under his skin so quickly. If this little back and forth keeps up, he's not sure he'll be able to keep a lid on the need to act.

"No? Must be a pretty boring place."

"I wouldn't call it _boring_ ," she hums, twiddling the stick deftly between her fingers. The remaining dango bobs like a metronome. "It's a bit set away from all of this. Its name's been forgotten by most—in fact, you might even say it's been forgotten by Time, itself. But those who walk along its shores, scale its endless white cliffs, and listen to its strange winds may remember."

Kakashi just barely stops himself from rolling his eyes and instead imbues his voice with as much interest as he can muster. "So, what's it called?"

She smiles, and her face is empty of everything. "I forget."

"That's a shame," Kakashi says, pulling out his battered copy of _Icha Icha_ and cracking it open. They really need to release a new volume. "Sounds like they breed curious things there. I'd be interested in visiting."

Being referred to as a 'thing' fails to get a rise out of her; she just smiles and smiles. "Am I being interrogated?"

"A lady with a mountain of hair that's no doubt hiding something, from a "forgotten" land, in a stadium full of defenseless civilians. I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," Kakashi says cheerfully.

She turns her attention back to the arena. "I thought I blended in quite well."

"I noticed."

"And you are… ?"

_Ha-ta-ke! Ha-ta-ke!_

"My name is Kakashi," he says.

All of his life, his name has been a catalyst, a trigger for some kind of reaction. Upon speaking it, many people gasp. Some cover their mouths with their hands in shock, or horror, or awe. A few people have bowed to him. On one memorable occasion, a missing-nin from Sound burst into tears and couldn't be consoled for over an hour, let alone goaded back into a fight. But there has never _not_ been some kind of acknowledgement, affirmation that his name— _Ha-ta-ke! Ha-ta-ke!_ —has thrown down roots in several lands and grown into something more than formidable throughout the continent.

"Oh." The woman tilts her head, gives him a blank stare, and then goes back to the match.

He blinks.

This has never happened before. His skin tightens, his cheeks heat, and never has he been more grateful for the mask than this very moment. Is this what it is to be nothing? No one? Who is he, then, without his name or the achievements he's made over the last twenty-five years? This would surely be a breaking point, the catalyst for his downward spiral into missing-nin territory, if he were anyone else.

"Huh," he says, and goes back to _Icha Icha_.

Below, Gaara has sealed himself into a dome of sand.

He moves to take the next stair, to go down for a better look at Sasuke's next move and assuage any lingering doubts Sakura probably has, when—

"Do you know of anyone named Iruka in this village?"

His foot pauses, then settles back on the stair.

With a scream, Sasuke practically soars, gliding down the wall and back into the ring, avoiding the sand and punching his fist through the dome of sand. Kakashi has no idea what comprises Gaara's favorite weapon, but if there's any quartz or silica in it, Sasuke's attack is going to make one hell of a glass sculpture.

He turns his attention away.

She gives him a blandly inquisitive smile. "I was told a man by the name of Iruka might be here, perhaps watching the match. I'd very much like to speak with him."

It would be so easy to sever her spinal cord with a blade made of pure lightning, illuminate her from the inside, and yank everything she's hiding out with it. His jaw crackles with a sour need, one he hasn't felt since Obito, since Rin. It's only by some miracle his killing intent is kept under wraps, but it builds and builds until his bones creak under the pressure. Any longer and he'll explode.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, revels in the burn of his own breath in the cage of his mask, and dredges up a smile.

"Sorry. I've never heard of him," he says pleasantly, and drops the hand holding _Icha Icha_ at his side. Against the cover, his fingers curve around shorthand. _Possible hostile. Seeks non-active shinobi. No chakra detected. Be alert_. "Interesting name, though. Not one that's common in Fire Country."

A long moment stretches out between them, the edges of it fraying beneath the jagged edges of the lie, and she stares at him with eyes that don't belong to her face. Hard, cold, her pupils twitch and shudder as if they mean to break their perfect circles and take new shape. In _Icha Icha_ , eyes are full of stars, are pools of water; hers are neither. Hers are vast and dark and endless, and if he holds her stare any longer he might drown in them. Disappear into the black and never return.

She blinks.

Her eyes, now as non-descript as they'd been before, duck away from his gaze, lashes dipping demurely. She turns back to the match with an agreeable smile. "No, I suppose it isn't."

His fingers curl again against his book. _Hostile_. _Get backup._

"Kakashi-sensei!"

There's a clatter of footsteps behind him, and he and the woman both turn to see the blindingly bright orange of a familiar tracksuit. Konoha's number one surprising ninja stands at the top of the stairs with the Nara boy at his side; both are out of breath and wearing identical expressions of fear.

Below them, Gai turns around, interested, because of course he is. Gai hasn't met a conflict he couldn't thumbs-up into submission.

Kakashi smiles, itching for a conclusion to… whatever this little interlude has been, and says, "Excuse me, won't you?"

Monkey and the others, whoever is lingering nearby, will keep her from setting one sandal near the Academy.

"Naruto?" Below them, Sakura stands and stares up at her teammate with an unimpressed tilt to her mouth. "Where have you _been_? You've missed most of Sasuke-kun's match!"

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto shouts, doubled over in an attempt to catch his breath. "You have to stop the fight. Sasuke can't beat that guy!"

He sighs. "Naruto, you need to have a little fai—"

"No, you don't understand!"

In the arena, Sasuke darts up the side of the wall, perching easily as if he'd been born there, and—yep, here it is. Ox, rabbit, monkey, followed by an activation, and the crowd is forced into awed silence as the cries of a thousand birds fills the air. Kakashi's interested to see how he'll use it; it's best for direct hits, of course, but Sasuke's a clever boy. He might try something else.

"Shut up and watch him!" Kakashi orders. "It's important that you—"

Naruto throws his head back and groans loud enough to garner angry looks from the people seated nearby. "We don't have _time_ for that, Kakashi-sensei! You need to stop the match _now_!

"Are you afraid he'll look better than you?" The Yamanaka girl asks with a sly grin.

From the top of the stairs, Naruto gives a breathless squeak of outrage. "As if he could! No, no, you didn't see—That Gaara guy is gonna—"

He's about to ride the coattails of the Yamanaka girl's dig and tell a little white lie about a secret to beating Chidori, because nothing captures Naruto's attention like finding a way to kick Sasuke's ass, but a sharp exhale next to him freezes the words.

The woman looks like the air's been compressed from her lungs, and there's a creeping hardness in her eyes, held fast by narrowed lids; there's a split second, hardly even worth thinking about, where he thinks she might attack. Instead, her face evens out and the bland mask she wears slips back on, all mild pleasantry and innocuity.

"Kurama," she murmurs, and the mound of her hair dips as she inclines her chin, sketching a small bow.

Kakashi goes still.

Behind him, a terrible silence has fallen, and when he looks over his shoulder he sees Naruto struck absolutely dumb, his jaw slack and eyes wide with fear and something else.

 _Kurama_.

He's never once heard the word, but all he needs to see is a familiar, dark glint lurking in Naruto's gaze, something Kakashi once saw years ago towering over fire and wreathed in the stench of rotting flesh, to know what it means.

The true name of the Beast. _  
_

That this complete stranger would know it—

"Y-You—" The word cracks down the middle, and Naruto stares at them, trembling. He visibly swallows hard and begins to take the stairs down to them, one by one, as if compelled. His pupils elongate a little, just enough for Kakashi to feel a true flash of fear. If the seal cracks—

But it doesn't. Or not enough to matter. A shiver visibly wracks Naruto's spine, pushing out of his mouth as a harsh exhale; his eyes grow wide and unseeing for a moment, and then understanding straightens the boy's shoulders, relaxes them in a way not much else has ever done.

Naruto looks at her with a quiet desperation, pupils pulsing—small, then long, then small again; a heartbeat at war with itself. "That's… me?"

"Yes. And no."

"It's… it's him, isn't it? The… the fox."

It wins a bland smile.

Naruto shudders through the confirmation. "But… No one's ever… Really? You don't…"

The woman's smile goes a little flinty, just for a moment, as his meaning becomes clear. "Why would I?"

"I… I mean, it's just that a long time ago I, uh, hurt a lot of people—"

"Accidents happen from time to time," she railroads right over him, soft and sweet. "Or so I'm told. You're not to blame for the… fickle nature of the Old Ones. The only one to blame is what lies beneath your skin."

Naruto shrugs and scratches at the back of his head, attempting his normal grin and falling just short of it. It's the smile that tells of countless lonely nights and mornings, of walking to school alone, of begging for food, attention, love. Kakashi had seen the boy who held the Nine-Tails on the receiving end of misplaced hatred plenty of times and did nothing. He looks away from Naruto's smile. "I don't know really know what you're talking about, lady, but… thanks. I think."

"Not at all."

Naruto laughs a little, cheeks pink. "Man, it's so cool to meet someone who's _nice_ right off the bat for a change, y'know? I just—" His nostrils flare and pique flashes across his face. "Huh. Anyone else smell that? It's all… sharp. Salty."

The woman smiles like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

"No, seriously." Naruto flaps a hand in the air. "Kakashi-sensei, your friends are all dogs, right? Are you really not smelling this? It's… _cool_. I know it from somewhere."

Kakashi sighs. "Contrary to popular belief, I'm not _actually_ part of the pack—Whoa!"

A small, moving blur rockets down the stairs and careens into Naruto, tiny hands grasping at orange, and a familiar blue scarf slithers down the steps to puddle almost sadly at sandaled feet.

"Konohamaru?" Naruto gasps.

As if triggered by the sound of his own name, Konohamaru lets out a wounded noise, a sob that gets stuck in his throat, the scrape of it as painful as a kunai strike. Naruto, patting the boy on the back, looks up at Kakashi helplessly.

"So many unexpected guests!" He trills. He has no answers to give.

Sakura pushes past Kakashi to kneel before Konohamaru, whose face is buried in Naruto's belly as if it might protect him from whatever he's been running from.

"Young Master!" Gai calls as he trots up the stairs, finally joining them. Kakashi's surprised it took this long, but then Gai's always had a soft spot for kids, especially those who embody big ideals. Kakashi would put money down on Konohamaru's genin education falling to the Green Beast as soon as Lee is promoted to chuunin. "What could possibly bring such a sorrowful expression to our village's most effusive youth?"

Deft fingers gently nudge Konohamaru's face away from Naruto, and Sakura peers at him with a gentle smile that almost takes attention away from the pinch between her brows. "Konohamaru-kun, what happened?"

"Fear not, Young Master!" Gai chimes in, all shining eyes and determination, and strikes a pose. "Whatever unhip trouble has befallen you will be dispatched with style! It is, of course, our duty and pleasure—shinobi cannot sit idly while the flowering youth of our fine village shed such sad tears! Point us in the direction of your dastardly foe, and my eternal rival and I will dispatch it in no less than ten and a half minutes!"

They all stare.

Kakashi sighs.

"Hey, Konohamaru, let go for a second." Naruto tries, but the boy clings even harder, fingers bleeding white with the strength of his grip.

Kakashi isn't all that familiar with Sarutobi Konohamaru beyond what he's heard from others, particularly Ebisu. _Foolhardy and unapologetic to a fault_ is what Ebisu usually mutters into his sake. _The boy isn't afraid of anything. He'll make a terrifying jounin someday, if he—by some miracle—graduates._

Anyone who drives Ebisu to drink five days out of seven isn't one to break down so easily without a damn good reason.

Speaking of good reasons for a breakdown. Kakashi looks over at the woman, who has since turned her attention to the wall of dark clouds inching ever closer, watching with an intensity so strong it's almost palpable. There was nothing to suggest such a storm would occur in the days leading up to the Final Exam, which means that in a minute he'll be forced to unsheath the Sharingan and finally pull the truth of it from her before it dooms them.

"Konohamaru-kun," Sakura says, her voice pitched quiet and unobtrusive, "Are you hurt? Is… Is that blood?"

Kakashi looks down to where Sakura gently touches Konohamaru's jacket, her fingers lighting over several dark patches in the fabric. Sakura studies the pads of her fingers, rubbing them together, but they're not stained red. They're wet.

"It's water," she confirms, and licks at her thumb. She makes a face. "Salt water."

"See? I _told_ you something smelled salty! Wait, is it, like, broth?" Naruto asks. "Maybe Konohamaru was at Ichiraku and—"

" _No_ , Naruto," Sakura sighs, like she can't believe she'd forgotten he was brain damaged. "Not like broth. Like… Like seawater."

At this, a barely-there smirk creeps over the woman's lips, slow to form and full of secrets, a late-afternoon shadow, yet it seems so wide that it threatens to split her dull face. He's seen it on the faces of a thousand foes, all of them burning with killing intent and madness, names inked into Bingo Books that never seemed to do their skills and abilities justice. This stranger, with her blank smile and vibrating skin, has never graced the pages of anyone's rosters, and is all the more dangerous for it.

He is ninja, therefore death is and always will be an unfortunate part of his life. He takes no joy in the lives he erases from the world but he'll make an exception for her.

As if privy to his thoughts, she catches his gaze and the tiny upturn of her lips becomes a little mean.

"ARE YOU _SMILING_ , LADY?! WHAT'S SO AWESOME ABOUT ATTACKING LITTLE KIDS?!" Naruto shouts, wrapping his arms around Konohamaru, looking betrayed.

The skin of her face shivers, the corners of her eyes and mouth pulling into contrition—or something that resembles it. "Apologies."

"Your face looks really weird. Are you having a seizure?"

"Naruto!" Sakura snaps.

" _He swallowed them_."

Naruto falls silent, and all eyes are on Konohamaru, who's shaking enough to come entirely apart. Kakashi shares a glance with Gai. The shock has worn off just enough for the boy to speak again; answers—even barely-coherent ones—will be soon to follow.  

Kakashi turns a kind look upon Konohamaru. He hopes it's kind, at least. It's the one he usually uses on the littler kids and idiots who don't know what trouble they've gotten themselves into by challenging him. "Can you tell us what happened to you, Konoham—"

"He _swallowed_ them," Konohamaru grits out. His spine twists under the force of his trembling, enough that Gai crouches down next to Sakura and places a calming hand on the back of the boy's neck. A soothing gesture. It never occurred to Kakashi to attempt it. "They killed Aota-kun and Tamaru-sensei and they wanted to hurt Udon and they wanted to take me but he _changed_ and he turned blue and gold and and he swallowed them and they were _gone_ —"

Sakura sucks in a shuddering breath, her eyes widening at the mention of Tamaru, but pushes on. "Who killed Tamaru-sensei, Konohamaru-kun? Who—?"

"What about Iruka-sensei," Naruto butts in, eyes almost comically round. "He was at school today. Konohamaru, is Iruka-sensei okay?"

Beside him, the woman twitches. It takes all of Kakashi's not inconsiderable willpower not to react. Gai exhales sharply and stands a little closer to Kakashi than the situation warrants.

Wide eyes glazed over with a terrible knowledge look up. "He said yes. He said yes and it changed him."

_Do your eyes change color often?_

Kakashi tries to take a breath, but there's no air to be found.

"Young Master," Gai says gently, firmly. "You must tell us who."

Shock plugs up Konohamaru's ears and the boy stares past them at a horror unseen, his tongue tripping over itself to get the words out. "They pulled Aota-kun's head right off like it was nothing—so much blood there was so _much_ blood and I could see his—his bones, I could see them, and everyone was screaming but he said _yes_ and it… it came from inside him. Big. It's big. It was so _big_."

_This comes… it comes from inside me. It's so big._

"Young Master." Kakashi's heart is going to crack a rib. "Is Iruka-sensei still…?"

At the very mention of his teacher, Konohamaru's expression crumbles, and everything inside of Kakashi shuts down, goes dark, until all that's left is a cold wind that can't even muster up the wherewithal to blow. The citrus tang of rage flares in the back of his throat, threatening to boil over, and he bites it down, forces it to simmer in his empty gut.

"Kakashi," Gai says quietly, and then falls silent.

It's Minato all over again. It's his father. It's Obito. It's Rin. He's not sure why this hits him as hard as it does; it's not even a little bit surprising. Everything he's ever had—loved—slips away, there and gone, like the strike of lightning. At this point, it's almost expected. And Iruka… was someone he couldn't even claim as his; he was little more than a possibility. A kind prospect. An interlude.

An after.

"He was hurt. I think he was… dying."

Kakashi's fingers curl into a trembling fist, clutching a storm that threatens to grow there. Drawing in a shuddering breath at the implication there, Naruto sways on unsteady feet.

"No. Not Iruka-sensei. He wouldn't—"

"But he said yes, and then he was bigger than anything in the world," Konohamaru whimpers as he drops to his knees.

There's a sudden clatter, and Kakashi jumps, suddenly too hot, too startled. Lee's in a heap on the stairs, curled into himself as if he were… he were…

A soft, sweet smell makes a home in his nose, overpowering the anger, and he knows this scent. Irises. Rin had once picked a bunch from a field they'd been trampling through, tucking them into Kakashi's and Obito's flak jackets with a grin. _It'll help with the smell. The next river we come across? I'm pushing you both in._ She had run ahead of them, disappeared into a sea of purples and pinks and blues and whites, and all he could smell was the bouquet that brushed against his neck with every step.

He can see the field now, waves of color threatening to crash upon a non-existent shore, and it would be wonderful to submerge himself in it, to let the current take him into the pinks and purples, the blues, such a striking color, a shift from a warm black to—

_What color did you think they were?_

"Kai!"

Clarity hits like a suckerpunch to the gut. Kakashi drags in a breath and forces down the pink and purple and blue and white water in his lungs that wants out. Shivering, he clears his throat and shakes his head like a dog, throwing off the last vestiges of the illusion.

Gai takes his hand off Kakashi's shoulder, brows beetled in concern. "Are you with me, my friend?"

"Yeah." To be caught in a fucking genjutsu, of all things. Rookie mistake, just like everything else about this fucking day. He sweeps the area with a quick glance, taking stock.

Silent save for their soft breaths, the civilians sleep the sleep of the innocent, and the children—Sakura, Naruto, and Konohamaru—curl into each other on the stairs, eyes flickering with their own flowering fields beneath closed lids.

The woman stands as she has been, arms crossed thoughtfully, eyes on Konohamaru. Completely unaffected.

"This isn't good," Gai says quietly.

"Hell of a time to try your hand at understatement," Kakashi sighs, and draws a blade.

A deafening boom shakes the stair beneath his feet, and Kakashi looks to the black cloud, but it's still too far to incite such a loud crack of thunder. Across the arena, set above the rest of them like a floating stage, the Hokage's spectator box is engulfed in thick smoke.

"Hokage-sama!" Gai takes a step, ready to jump in and rush to their Hokage's aid with all the _flair_ and _hipness_ he possesses, but a flurry of movement stops him as the nearby ANBU spur into action.

The red swirl on his arm throbs with the memory of missions from years past, but he shoves the urge to join them down, exhaling hard and closing his eyes. There are only so many things he can worry about.

First things first: he needs to assess the situation at the Academy.

As a ninja of Konoha, he recognizes that the pre-genin are the actual future of the village. Without their able bodies, Konoha is vulnerable, and a vulnerable city is ripe for the picking. Alliances are fleeting; any one of their "friends" could and would turn on them if the incentive were pretty enough.

As a man, he's never met most of the brats that run rampant there, and if they die without attempting to put what little knowledge and wits they have to use then they wouldn't have made it very far as ninja anyway. Those kids are little more than cannon fodder at this point. There's only one person in that school whose life he gives a shit about.

Swallowing hard and dropping his shoulders, Kakashi relinquishes the iron-clad hold upon himself as he slips into a body that knows how to run and hunt on four legs better than two, and the mind that will replace his own is wonderfully uncomplicated, its only purpose to...

Its only purpose is to—

To—

He snaps out of it, breathing hard, and a mottled hand crawls up his spine to wrap spindly fingers around his heart and squeeze. It takes him a moment to recognize the feeling, but after a moment it all comes back to him. Fear. True fear. It's been awhile since such an old friend came to visit. No time like the present.

"Kakashi?"

Nothing.

There's _nothing_.

"An interesting puppet show." Gai drops into a ready stance as eight men and women, all bearing the uniform and insignia of Sound, finally show themselves, emerging from their civilian disguises like snakes shedding their skin, gathered around a… fuck, an ANBU. "But at least we know the identity of the puppeteer. I never expected them to use the guise of ANBU, though. Hmph. How very _unhip_! Orochimaru has certainly gotten cocky in his old age. My rival, are you feeling up to cutting a few strings?"

He opens his mouth to answer, to give some kind of explanation, but the words stall on his tongue, trapped by the wall of his teeth.

"Kakashi?"

What the hell is he supposed to say?

The Hound is dead, which means—

A thoughtful noise snags his attention, and as if suddenly remembering where she is, the woman begins to descend the stairs. Kakashi can't see her face, but he doesn't need to—he can just imagine the bland expression there.

The Sound nin all tense at her approach, while the person in the ANBU cat mask does nothing, but instead of the attack they expect she lifts her hands in a rather lackadaisical fashion.

"Kill the bitch and then take care of the other two," a Sound nin says to the others as he lifts a hand. Four kunai are fanned out between his fingers, and with a quick movement he lets them fly.

"Oh, please," she pleads, her tone as flat as the concrete stairs upon which she descends, startlingly unlike the soft-spoken woman who greeted Naruto with deference one might use when addressing the daimyo. "Don't hurt me."  

Kakashi barely claws his hitai-ate up in time, but the Sharingan is open wide and ready when she steps almost daintily off the second to last stair. It's the last thing he sees before her body ripples out of sight and the kunai sail up toward him and Gai—easily deflected, of course, but that doesn't explain where—

One of the Sound nin shouts in surprise as he's thrown against the stadium guardrail with a sickening crack; his body is bent back at an impossible angle, spine cleaved in two, practically wrapped around the rail. He doesn't fall to the ground.

With an odd rushing sound, the woman slowly comes into view, the colors and lines of her body rippling from the top of her head down until she's whole, her skin a mottled dark red and white, lips almost black; her eyes, with their odd pupils—rectangular—and fine, fine movements, flitting in such minute ticks that they almost look fixed.

But her hair. He doesn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't for it to fall out of its mound… or fall _up_ , rather. Its color leeches away as it dances and billows its way into something that looks an awful lot like water. No. It _is_ water. Shifting, flowing, static where it clings to her head, branching out into eight separate streams that almost look as if they're moving independent of each other.

"My god," Gai whispers, rapt.

Even by Kakashi's standards, it's an odd transformation, different from any he's ever seen, and had the Sharingan not witnessed it he wouldn't have trusted it to be real. A genjutsu, maybe, and a good one, but she didn't spend an ounce of chakra on it. He can't detect any chakra at all.

The red and white of her ripple again, lines of dark blue and black chasing each other across her skin, lips bleeding to a startlingly bright red. With a small but wicked smirk, she lifts a hand, held out as if she means to take the hand of the nearest nin, and one of the writhing tendrils protruding from her head slithers into her palm, curling up, collapsing into itself, baying for action in a way not unlike a hound.

Her fingers twitch, and it moves almost too fast for him to see, exploding outward into slivers that zip from body to body, slipping into mouths and eyes and ears.

Kakashi watches, unable to look away, as the men and women of Sound thrash and struggle against the invasion of their bodies, clawing at their faces and throats, their bellies, their heads, screaming and gurgling their way into hysteria the likes of which he's not seen in a long time. One by one, they fall to the ground, faces contorted in horror, eyes bulging, tongues fat, and trickles of saliva—no, _water_ —emerge from the corners of their mouths, their noses, their ears.

It takes him a moment, but then the realization dawns.

They're drowning. All of them.

Well, almost all.

The ANBU crawls forward on his belly, spates of water spilling from beneath his mask to soak into the black of his stolen uniform. A puddle forms beneath him, spreading out slowly. Like blood. "You… what are you…"

Her red, red mouth is an immovable line, even as the seven tendrils dart forward and snap at him with every intention of attacking. The blue-green of her skin bleeds to a bone white. "Speak up, I can't hear you. I think you have something in your mouth."

"We… we will… raze Konoha to—"

" _You_? _You're_ going to raze it?" She looks around, utterly unimpressed, and gestures to the still bodies of the Sound nin strewn about them. "No, I don't think you will. I don't see anybody who's going to do anything."  

"I m-may die to...day… but you will ne-never…" He stops, shivers, and vomits up more water, wheezing and sputtering until he can't hold himself up any longer and collapses into the growing puddle beneath him. "… Oro… Orochimaru-sama… will..."

Even in death, his last breaths are only for his lord. Kakashi has to give him credit; that kind of loyalty is hard to come by these days.

Without warning, the woman drops, her legs folding as if the very bones had been plucked from them, but the crouch into which she falls is balanced and hard, ready. The discipline with which she holds herself would be admirable if Kakashi weren't so sure she was going to use it to try and kill him after this.

"Do you ever… give any thought to the dirt? Soil, I mean." Every trace of her before deference gone, beaten into submission by the cold, barbed thread that's sewn itself into her tongue. As if ink had been dropped into water, her skin blooms into endless night, the darkest black he's ever seen. "Soil is… malleable, diverse in color, texture, and through it things may grow. A very rudimentary giver of life. It's fascinating, really, once you think about it."

Gai cuts a confused glance his way. _Soil?_

Kakashi can do little but shrug. It's always the crazy ones.

"Over the years, it's become very full of itself." The ANBU wheezes and shudders, his head lolling to rest upon her sandals. His body is wracked by a deep, hacking cough, and more water dribbles out from behind the mask to splash over her exposed toes. She doesn't seem to notice. "It's gluttonous now—whorish even—constantly fat with spawn, multiplying and multiplying without thought. And its children? Its children think themselves so much greater than those that came before… when the truth is, none of them were great to begin with.

"You see, soil owes its success, its very _existence_ , to an oft-overlooked entity. Soil is sand and sand is stone and stone is forged in the sea. And not once in its long campaign across the land has it thanked its mother. Not once has it apologized for building bridges upon her and uniting shores made to be kept apart. For dumping the oil and ash of industry into her. For poisoning her breath and body with potions and medicines. The sea has seen and done much, and asked for precious little in return, but still the ungrateful soil refuses to pay its respects."

_… it talks to me. It's weird, I know. And… and sometimes, when I'm awake, I hear it. Does that make me crazy?_

The ANBU convulses, vomiting more water over her toes; every breath is pain, a struggle Kakashi recognizes. The fast leak of the ANBU's chakra begins to trickle into nothing. A swift death wouldn't even be mercy at this point; it would be the only logical thing to do to save time.  "Oro...mar..u… is..."

"Is just like the rest of you," she whispers, and the oddly blank look on her face melts into something unyielding and cold. "Gluttonous, whorish, filthy, ungrateful… and too much everywhere."

With a quick movement, she jerks her foot out from under the ANBU's head, which hits the concrete hard, graceless. Distantly, Kakashi knows this is his enemy, would kill him and everyone else in the stands without a single shred of remorse, and that he'd treat the man no differently. Still, it's utterly dehumanizing to watch as she lifts her foot, wet toes gleaming, and slots them almost gently under the mask. Her leg pushes forward, dislodging red and white porcelain to reveal a pale, bespectacled face.

Kakashi exhales.

As the mask skitters across the floor, the Yakushi kid gives a violent heave and a loud, drawn-out groan, bones popping as his spine bends, his fingers cramping. An eternity stretches out between each seizure, between the drops of water that dribble out from the corner of his slackening mouth.

"W...hy… can't…"

She stares down at him as if he were a particularly interesting bug. Her head tilts and her hair sways with it. "Why can't what—why can't you feel it? Because I'm in there. I'm in your heart now; little doors inside opening and closing, pumping me through your arteries, into every part of you. Diluting everything that makes you work… diluting your chakra."

With a sharp, shuddering inhale, Yakushi twitches hard at that, and her expression becomes alight with cruel amusement, her red mouth flat and hard. "Oh, there it is—the despair. The end of the struggle. The realization. Because how can you launch your one, last-ditch attack without the thing on which you're so dependent? What are ninja if they can't use chakra? Who are you without it—are you even anyone?"

A sob scrapes its way out of Yakushi's throat. The edge of his glasses drags along the concrete with a squeak. A whine.

She seizes upon it, sniffing out the exposed wound like a dog. "Is that why you're so on about this Orochimaru? Is he your family? They say blood is thicker than water, but…" The words trail off as her lips part around a flash of white teeth, a grin that's there and gone. "... but I wonder how accurate that is when you actually add water to the blood."

Yakushi twitches, grasping fingers beginning to slow; every movement is a struggle.

"You've probably never been so clean inside."

"Nnh—" One last convulsion, one last dribble of water…

…. and he finally, _finally_ stops.

Her tongue touches the bottom edge of her top front teeth, relishing the words as if her mouth were coated in the sinister sugar of them.

"Soil washes away so easily, after all."


	6. Hadal (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And, finally, Iruka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parts 2 and 3 were originally one chapter, but I split it to keep the length of each chapter relatively the same. Part 3 is an immediate continuation of 2.
> 
> Again, many thanks to [flameskimmer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flameskimmer) for beta-ing!

There's a slosh, a glint, and the water slips from each dead body with a serpentine grace, coalescing into a puddle that pitches upward to wrap around the woman's outstretched hand, encircling it with a slow, pulsing flow that looks almost loving. The hard cast to her eyes softens, and the water slithers back up the dark curve of her neck to join its brethren, innocuously swaying in an unseen current.

A moment passes, two, and then she finally rolls herself up off the ground to stand. She lifts her chin and her odd gaze lights on Kakashi, then slowly drags its way over to Gai. The black of her skin leeches away to a soft green as the unforgiving line of her body relaxes. Kakashi stifles a snort.

This woman took down eight Sound nin and Orochimaru's pet spy without so much as a hitch in her step. They're not even a little bit of a threat to her.  

Fighting her will be the greatest, and no doubt last, fight he'll ever have.

But something sparks in her eyes, an ember of something that dreams of maybe being humor someday, and she turns her back. "You're late."

Kakashi blinks. He turns to look at Gai, but something thick curls around the back of his neck, stalling him. Throwing it off ought to be easy—he's never met a hold he couldn't slip out of—but there's no bend in the grip, no weakness to exploit. His fingers scrabble at smooth, slippery skin, and his feet kick out at nothing; he can hear Gai attempting his own escape to no avail.

Sparks lick at the skin of his palm, and inside his chest a thousand angry birds demand release.

"Easy there, buddy."  

It makes him pause long enough to disperse the build of electricity, the words piercing the haze of the lizard brain telling him to escape. He exhales, relaxes his muscles one by one, and takes stock.

The thing thrown around his neck is an arm that belongs to a tall, imposing man, who's draped himself between him and Gai as if they were comrades, friends. He can only see the man's profile—pale skin, almost gray, and the curve of a bald head, but he spies a wide smile there, the kind Kakashi himself uses when necessary; there's not a trace of deception he can see.

"I thought we said low-key," the man calls to the woman, grinning.

"Be grateful I didn't bring the stadium down."

The man's head droops on a sigh, and then he appeals to both Kakashi and Gai, "She's a real piece of work, isn't she? We come here for _one thing_ and she goes and pulls this." He gestures with the hand hanging over Gai's chest to the bodies at the bottom of the stairs. "Seriously. Just dead bodies all over the floor. I can't leave her alone for two seconds. She been giving you trouble?"

"I insist you face us like a true shinobi would," Gai growls, but the man just leans forward, the weight of his arms bringing the both of them with him. Kakashi tenses and pushes against the man's arm slightly, testing, but there's no give.

"Hey!" The man barks down at her, all smiles, and gestures at Kakashi and Gai. "Are we killing these two, or…?"

Kakashi's horrified to realize that the man _could_ , without so much as a thought. One squeeze of the impossibly strong arm around Kakashi's neck and that would be it. Over. Done.

The woman pivots on her heel slowly, the eight tendrils of water curling around each other, meshing, flowing, then unspinning back into separate sections. Her gaze lands with a hard thud upon them, and Kakashi feels those eyes peel his vest away, his uniform, his skin. His ribs crack beneath her gaze and he stands, flayed open, for her viewing pleasure, like a trembling first-year genin caught in a genjutsu.

She gives a slow blink, the moment ends, and his skin knits back together. Her lips part coyly. "No."

"All righty." There's an odd feeling of weightlessness as the arm lifts from around Kakashi's neck and the man steps back, goodnaturedly straightening Gai's vest as he does. High cheekbones cast shadows on a good-looking face, and the man's single strip of spiky gray hair looks a bit sharp in the light. Kakashi's gaze drops to the two tattoos of white circles on the man's temples. "Sorry about that, fellas. No harm done, yeah?"

He pats Kakashi on the arm with a solid _thwack_.

Kakashi stares at him, and the Sharingan throbs a little as it searches, anemic in its results—no color, no intent. As chakra-less as the dead spy on the ground and the woman who put him there.

_Who are you without it—are you anyone?_

The man positively beams.

The woman turns her back again; a dismissal—not of the man, but of _them_. They have no place on the turf she has claimed as her own; nonentities in their own home.

With a sigh and a commiserating shrug at Kakashi, the man turns. "Whoa, hey. Is that Kurama? I think I almost tripped over Kurama back there," he says as he trots down the stairs, all easy grace belying something lurking beneath the friendly veneer.

"Mm." Frustratingly, perfectly neutral.

"I don't have a problem with the color orange, really, but _wow_ , the vessel's wearing a lot of—wait, look down there! Is that—it is! Shukaku! How many of the Old Beasts are running around this shithole, anyway? Think they'll come back with us? We should invite them both back with us. These kids must be awesome to hang around with."

"You can't take every child you come across."

"Bet I can. Do you know how many orphans are running around these parts?" The man tucks his hands into the waistband at his back and rocks on his heels. "Villages are practically _giving_ them away. I could probably pick, like, ten up off the street at a time."

An almost thoughtful silence descends while they contemplate the man's ability to create a pack of orphan children, and Kakashi cuts a quick glance at Gai, dropping his fingers to his thigh to sign _suggested action?_

Gai shakes his head faintly, utterly at a loss. Even his hair looks duller than it did a few minutes ago. His thick fingers sketch a quick _unsure_.

The man and woman could be tracking their every move, using such inane conversation as pretense while they secure the area, or perhaps there are keywords embedded in their dialogue and they're having another conversation entirely. It's the kind of thing Kakashi would expect from a regular enemy, which is why he thinks they're just actually ignoring them.

"What did you find?" Beyond the stadium where her gaze is fixed, the wall of clouds churns its way across the sky. The closer it comes to them, the weirder it looks. It's not like any storm he's ever seen.

"I found these people are pretty loose with their tongues if you buy 'em food. I bought some people this thing called 'ramen.' It's pretty good, all told. It's noodles, right? And they have different kinds with different toppings, so I got chicken and pork in mine, and you pour this soy stuff over it and—"

Her silence is so pointed it's almost palpable.

He sighs. "You're no fun. I bet you found something good while you were sitting around doing nothing. I bet it was _sugary_. Don't give me that look. I've known you since you were a fat kid, and after all these years you certainly haven't lost your sweet tooth. Pony up—what'd you find? I saw this guy selling stuff called dango. It looked sweet. Was it that? It was, wasn't it."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about. You're wasting time. Did you find out anything _useful_?"

"He's pretty well-known," the man says, the muscles in his back rippling as his shoulders lift and then drop. "A teacher. I think some of the mothers have a thing for him—the whole respect for a person in a position of authority thing. He's well-liked. Not that you'd know anything about that."

"Anything else?"

"Kids adore him, which you _definitely_ don't know anything about. Uh, he does a thing with giving blessings to something called _jounin_ or whatever…? I don't know, I didn't really understand what the hell they were talking about so I kind of tuned out after a while. Oh, but wait. There's something else. You ready for this?" The man waits until he has her complete attention, and then he says with great relish, "He's of _low rank_."

There's a charged pause, and for a moment Kakashi thinks this is it—this is when they drop the act, turn, and attack. He curls his fingers into claws and pulls the first licks of lightning into his palm, ready, because if they think he's going down without a fight, without making it just a little bit harder for them to get Iruka, then they don't know who—  

As if helpless to do anything else, the man bursts into loud booming laughter while the woman hides her chuckles behind her hand.

With a dejected whisper, the lightning dissipates.

"I know, right?" The man guffaws, bending at the waist to slap his knee. "I was _dying_. Can you even imagine?"

"These people," she says, with not a little disdain. "Well, won't they be surprised."

Wiping a tear from his eye, the man gestures to the massive cloud that hovers above the village like a death shroud. "Should we be doing something about this?"

"It seems to be in hand."

"People are dying."

She tilts her head. "And?"

"You know that this _has_ been his home for the last twenty-some-odd years, right? If he ends up killing a whole bunch of his friends, I doubt he'll forgive us for it. We want to be on his good side, remember? And that probably means preventing him from accidentally decimating his village."

She exhales through her nose. "Fine."

Enough. He's had enough.

The village is under attack, the Hokage is trapped in battle with a ghost who just won't be at peace already, and these two… Whoever they are and whatever their connection to Iruka, it's not enough to persuade Kakashi into giving them an inch in this. He won't find any kind of victory against them but he's not going to make it easy. Their blood will stain the dirt of Konoha before they leave it, a reminder that even _shitholes_ harbor surprises.

With a loaded glance at Gai, he expends a little bit of chakra to bypass the stairs and take a place on the man's left side. Behind him, he hears Gai leap, landing next to the woman.

"I am sorry, my new, strange friends," Gai says, "but whatever is you seek in Konoha will not be so easily removed. A village's strength is in its people, and the removal of one will weaken all."

The air shivers for a moment, a ripple of amusement, but the woman's voice is frustratingly neutral as she replies, "That seems like a terrible foundation on which to build something, if the loss of one can bring it low."

"In other villages, perhaps," Gai agrees, inclining his head with a frighteningly subdued smile that explodes into a grin as he follows the concession up with a fist held toward the sky. "But in our fair Konoha, every shinobi, every civilian, every child, every _flower_ is connected like the links in a mail shirt, stopping the glancing blows of a world full of nameless foes! Together, we stand as one, and together we will stand against your mysterious machinations!"

A stunned silence falls over the tableau they make. Kakashi rubs the back of his head and sighs.

"I love this place," the man whispers, eyes wide. "It's full of fucking _weirdos_."

Expelling a breath, shoulders rolling into a hard, straight line—a stance that speaks of discipline that comes with grueling training—the woman lifts her chin and booms, " _Kurama!_ "

In the stillness behind them, someone moves.

"Your lord has need of you. Rise up with us to meet him." She gestures with a graceful twist of her hand toward the coming cloud.

Kakashi turns in time to see a blur of movement and blindingly bright orange, and then Naruto stands before them, dropping to a knee before Kakashi can draw a breath to protest. There's nothing of his student in the eyes that stare up at them, bright blue given way to red slits.

"My lady." It comes out as a rumble that once shook the foundation of mountains, and the air punches out of Kakashi's lungs. That voice—

She inclines her head regally and gestures for him to rise. There's a dark smirk on her face that makes the hair on Kakashi's arms stand on end. "It's been some time since we last met. I must admit, I expected to see you sooner. It seems these… _people_ have you chained well."

"These _people_ remember the Yellow Flash, and yet none think upon the woman who bound me. It's a shame how easily the weaker sex is forgotten." Naruto—no, the Nine-Tails—says, head tilting slightly, coy. "Isn't it?"

The woman's smirk doesn't budge, but her eyes harden, the spheres of her pupils elongating into little rectangular bars of endless black. "Tread carefully."

"Apologies," the Nine-Tails murmurs. It doesn't sound very apologetic. "I heard whispers, but the notion that she had… birthed a _child_ seemed too foolish to be borne. It seemed prudent to ignore it altogether."

"He's been here all along," the man chimes in with a wide grin. "You really never…? Did they bind your senses along with the rest of you?"

Stolen yellow hair bristles. "I was otherwise occupied, my _lords_. My prison walls are quite loud and shrill at times—it's hard to concentrate on much else. Even now, he struggles against me—the man is dear to him."

Kakashi glances at the dark barrier coming from the spectator's box and wishes, not for the first time in his life, that the Hokage would drop what he's doing and come save him. Not that it would probably do much. The Sandaime's strong, but enough to take down two people who can massacre a squad of Sound nin without the use of chakra and wake the bane of Konoha just by saying its name?

"We could find you a new vessel, should you want one," she says.

"And if I do not? If I wished to tread with feet that are my own?"

Kakashi stiffens.

She gives a slow blink. "I'm sure a deal could be made."

A wicked smile curls across a boyish face, as dark as the coming storm, and the whisker marks grow more pronounced. "Ah. So long as I throw in with you and yours, you mean. Freedom in exchange for a different kind of prison."

Her chin tilts up. She says nothing to deny it.

"You ask much. Too much. I am of the Fire, remember; its hold on me cannot be extinguished so easily."

"That flame has been burning for years, and yet I smell nothing of it here." At this, the Nine-Tails goes still, and the woman turns her terrible eyes upon it, a hit on an impossible target. "Used and discarded, left in the care of _Men_ , little more than embers to be stomped out. This is his treatment of you. What I offer is not a prison, but redemption. A new beginning. I know how much you enjoy those."

A cold smile cuts across Naruto's face, slitted irises growing redder, darker. A whisper of power rolls over Kakashi's skin, a reminder that beneath the orange and blue tracksuit lies a monster. "The flame burns brighter, lately. I smell in it the air. I hear it in the crackle of the leaves. Pretty Konoha and the rest of its like will not remain green for long."

"Would you really see it burn?" The woman asks, lips pinching. "It's the world for which you were made."

"You don't know the world for which I was made," the Nine-Tails snaps, so very unlike Naruto, and Kakashi's never been more grateful for the hitai-ate that covers the Sharingan. If he ever copied this, he'd never see anything else. "But you never cared for the outcome of this game. What changed?"

Silence coils around them, a serpent intending to squeeze the life out of them, and it is a long stretch of a moment that passes before she murmurs, "She did."

Kakashi follows her gaze toward the storm. There's an odd shadow just above the top curve of the massive cloud, a shifting—

"Is that—?"

"A man," Gai rumbles in agreement. "What a powerful foe, to control a storm in such a way."

There's a loud snort of amusement, and the man rocks on his heels again. "Not really a foe. Not really a hero, either."

"Not really a man," the woman adds.

Gai blinks at her, thick eyebrows lifting in curiosity. "What kind of man is not really a man?"

With a rather cavalier shrug, the man says, "That kind that isn't anything except what it is. Vast and bottomless—calm and angry. Mysterious. Kind. Terrible. Powerful. Both the beginning and the end."

"While I would like to meet such a man, that doesn't describe anyone I know," Gai says. "Certainly no one within this village."

"And yet." The woman tilts her head at them, her eyes narrowed pointedly. The little bars of her pupils seem to vibrate in the cage of her irises.

"And yet check that action out." Her companion beams. Atop the edge of the cloud, as if it were a carpet that had been rolled out, a man who is not a man treads. "We've been looking for him for a while now."

Kakashi swallows hard. "You were looking for Iruka. You said you were here for him."

The woman turns her head and gives him a long, searching look, before she catches the gaze of the Nine-Tails and jerks her chin toward the arena. With a long-suffering growl that rakes over Kakashi's flesh, it leaps into the arena and lands next to Gaara. They're too far away for him to hear whatever it is the Nine-Tails says to the boy, but Kakashi can see the easing of trembling in thin shoulders, the softening of a clawed grip on red hair. Madness leaves Gaara of the Sand in a low, rolling hum, and soon he stands tall, looking around the stadium with new eyes. The Nine-Tails says something, and Gaara nods.

"We did come here for Iruka. Umino Iruka." Kakashi turns his attention to the woman, and as if to punctuate her point, she gestures toward the storm with a graceful wave of her hand. "And we found him."

A cold, stone fist knocks the air out of his lungs, his gaze held helplessly by the boy—no, the man who isn't a man—and the dark, shifting chariot he rides. The woman gives him one last bland look before bounding away, into the arena for a moment and then beyond it, to stand on the very edge of the stadium's far wall. A welcome party of one, awaiting the arrival of the coming tempest.

Beyond the stadium comes the faint sound of terrified screaming. The storm has come.

Gai chokes. "That's… _That's_ Iruka-sensei? That's _Iruka-sensei_? Impossible!" And then, oddly, Gai turns a thoughtful, almost pensive gaze upon Kakashi, as if waiting for something.

It _is_ impossible. More than impossible. Even if he had the power to bring about such a catastrophic end to Konoha, there's no way Iruka—kind, loud, helpful, ridiculous, fearless Iruka—would ever. There's not a single shinobi in the entire village more loyal.  

"He is a chuunin, is he not, Kakashi? How can he wield the storm in such a way?" Gai whispers, awed, hushed in a way Gai never is.

"Hm? Oh, that's not a storm." The man looks positively tickled by the idea. "It's a wave."

Flashing them a cheerful smile, he leaves, bounding away to join his companion at the edge of the stadium. The Nine-Tails and Gaara follow closely behind.

A wave.

It had been on the tongues of old sailors, men and women whose livelihood was the open sea, deep in their cups with the sparkle of old tales and legends in their eyes. They spoke of impossible things in the low light of dank pubs, in the bath houses, on the piers overlooking their first love; of seals who would slip their skins off and walk upon the shores as beautiful women; of regions where passing ships disappear and never return; of sounds from the deep that belong to no known creature and drive those that hear them to madness; of waves so large they stretch into the sky as if they mean to drown Heaven, itself.

 _Eternity began with the sea_ , they whispered, because their eternities were nothing to him and they could afford to say such nonsense; easily ignored. What did they actually know of the world?

He stares up at it, helpless, powerless. It bows over the land like a second sky, kilometers high and wide, the biggest display of power he's ever witnessed first-hand—and he'd been there the night of the Nine-Tail's attack. They'd been fighting against a corporeal enemy then, one with obvious intent—how are they supposed to fight something of this magnitude? There's not a fire jutsu in the world that would be powerful enough to dissipate this.

He knows nothing about the world. About anything.

He suddenly misses the prospect of fighting Sound invaders. They, at least, fit his purview.

"It has been a most interesting day, my rival," Gai says, solemn, and Kakashi wants to laugh. Cry. Scream.

Instead, he rubs the back of his neck with a sigh. "Understatement again, huh? This gonna be a new habit of yours?"

"Perhaps," Gai muses, then gestures to the wave which will soon encroach upon the stadium. It won't be long before it passes through them, and they drown. "Stranger things are happening."

"Apparently."

"Did you know?"

Kakashi blinks. "What, about—No. Why would I know?"

"Oh, my rival." A sly smile, small though it is, snakes across Gai's face, lips parting to flash a hint of white teeth, and Kakashi swallows down his horror at what's coming. "I am the most observant man in all Konoha—"

"You never once noticed when I'd messed with your gear or put itching powder in your socks—"

" _All of Konoha_ ," Gai railroads right over him. "You watch him."

"I do n—"

"You always have, my friend. Whether you realize or not, but your gaze follows him whenever he is nearby. In the Mission Room. On the street. At the fine Ichiraku. If you are speaking to me when he happens to walk by, you pause. You cow to him when he yells at you for your admittedly less-than-ideal reports. On more than one occasion, we have taken our sparring matches to places near the Academy, in what I am sure were attempts to catch a glimpse of him."

"I—" He coughs a little, then props his fist upon his hip, a bit stymied. "Huh."

He _knew_ Gai went along with those location changes too easily.

Gai gives a satisfied sigh. "Your springtime of love is so _moving_ , Kakashi. Although I am somewhat disheartened by the fact that you did not feel you could entrust your most precious secret to me. If I may be so bold, what is it about him that moves you so?"

Swallowing hard, he runs his thumb over the leather between each of his fingers, and gives in. "It's a… long story, and time is something we're kind of short on. I… At this point, it's treason to ask, but if it comes down to it… I want to try and save him. If we even can. Is that too much to ask of you, Gai?"

"No!" Arms akimbo, Gai stands with his chin tilted, the very picture of a proud ninja of Konoha. If Rock Lee were awake and completely in control of all his limbs, he would no doubt be taking notes, or posing right alongside his master. "A shinobi brother is in the grip of an awesome, unexplained power, and we would be remiss in our duties as ninja if we let our beloved Iruka-sensei face it alone. We'll rally our Youthful Passion and help him with all the flair we can muster!"

Something clenches gratefully in his chest, and he huffs a laugh. Who would have thought that kicking the ass of that weird kid with the bowl cut all those years ago would net him one of the best friends he'd ever have?

"You can thank me later," Gai says, all good humor. " _And_ tell me all about your covert canine companion."

"Right." He won't.

"Well, my friend? Are you ready?"

His fingers burn as they curl into a loose hold, a phantom palm pressed to his own, and he's a weapon again, wearing a porcelain face and calling it good enough.

He'd been banking on there being an after once the Exam was over, but it looks like it's going to have to wait a little longer. It's already been almost a decade; what's another day and a massive, country-destroying wave on top of it?

 _Don't disappear into yourself again. Don't go where I can't follow_.

Kakashi curls his hand into a fist. "Let's go."

 

+

 

By the time they join the others at the edge of the stadium wall, Genma, Sasuke, and Gaara's companions are there, as well. The blonde girl with the fan cuts them a shrewd, distrusting look, but says nothing. Being from Sunagakure, it's no doubt the most water she's ever seen in her life.

"So, who wants to clue me in on _what the fuck that even is_?" Genma steps next to Gai, chewing furiously on his senbon, staring at the wave with wide, but interested eyes.

"It is our own Iruka-sensei," Gai says with an odd undertone of pride in his voice.

"Fuck, what—" With a sputter, the senbon goes flying over the edge. "That's not funny, man."

Kakashi steps forward. "He wasn't being funny."

The particular brand of mind-boggled shock dominating Genma's otherwise pleasantly disinterested features is a new one. "Fuck. It can't—fuck. No, Iruka can't—He wouldn't—"

"All this power, and no one ever knew?" Sasuke whispers, struck. "How could he have been allowed to live?"

At that, the Nine-Tails barks raucously, and it takes a moment for Kakashi to realize it's laughter. "Because power—true power—cannot be destroyed. Just rearranged."

Sasuke starts, surprised, and peers with no little confusion at his teammate. "What did you say?"

A small, cruel smile curves Naruto's face. "Not that _you_ would know what true power is."

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Ah, the Uchiha." Grinning with long, sharp teeth and pupils shrunk to slivers, the Nine-Tails turns its attention to Sasuke. It seems to stare right through the boy, cataloguing something Kakashi can't see, drinking in everything about him. "How is your brother, little Sasuke-kun? Give him my regards when you see him next. I see his mark all over you, his fingerprints—fat and red little clouds. Your mother loved to watch the clouds, didn't she? Until your brother ripped her eyes from her head, of course—"

"You—" Rage contorts his face into something ugly, a darkness brought to the surface like a boil from beneath the skin. Sasuke brings his hands up, fingers priming for a seal, and the Nine-Tails laughs, waiting, ready, a red aura growing around its stolen body in preparation for what will no doubt be a quick, devastating match.

"The whole of Konoha failed to bring me down," the Nine-Tails sneers, baring long canines. "Think you can do better, little boy?"

Understanding dawns, breaking over Sasuke's face, and the rage morphs into something else. Protectiveness, maybe. An anger that does not belong to him alone.

"I'll burn you out of that body," Sasuke hisses.

Kakashi has taught Sasuke many things over the course of the month, but not enough to bring down the demon fox.

" _Enough_."

It washes over him, all of them, and the tense promise of a fight breaks, dragging everyone's attention to the woman with the serpentine water writhing from the delicate dome of her bare scalp.

Panting through the anger, Sasuke eyes the Nine-Tails with a mutinous glare and says again, "I'll burn you out of that body."

The Nine-Tails smiles. "I look forward to it."

Genma whips around and stares at the woman, then Naruto. "Can _somebody_ explain what the hell is going _on_?!"

The woman's pupils are still thick, black bars, but around them bleeds a familiar shade of blue, one Kakashi caught a glimpse of years ago when a boy was fixing to jump off Hokage Mountain to impress a bunch of morons. Skin blushing an unnatural shade of pink, she looks at each of them in turn, hard, considering, and then straightens up, commanding their attention as if she were about to impart orders.

"I am only going to say this once," she says, and they stand a little taller under the weight of the proclamation. "This—" She gestures to the wave "—is not born of chakra, or anything you will have seen in your lives. What you see is but a _taste_ of true, perfect power; it lives in him and sees his will done. It's in every part of him and _is_ every part of him. It was him when this world was made and it will be him when this world ends. It is endless and more than you can fathom, and it will never stop unless he wishes it so."

Her companion nods sagely, and as he does the gray of his hair leeches away until translucence catches the shadow of the looming wave, turned into static, swaying water like the woman's. It flows into a triangular point.

"Who the hell do you think you are? You don't know anything about Iru—"

Before Genma can finish, she turns a look of pure, unadulterated outrage on him, silencing his righteousness at the quick. If Genma still had the senbon between his teeth, he no doubt would have made a go at swallowing it.

"Who _am_ I? I am Umino Tako, the blood of his blood, born of his mother's sea, and I know more of him and his place in this world than any of you."

Kakashi inhales the stale smell of his own breath, sweat, the whisper of leaves and the piercing bite of salt, and can't do anything to refute the truth of what she's saying. All he can do is push forward toward some kind of end. It is his Way. "What do we need to do?"

Umino Tako turns back to the wave. "He only hears the roar of the sea now. To stop it, it needs to be drained from his ears."

"It is stopped," Sasuke points out. "The wave isn't moving."

"The Spectator's Box. He's going for the Kazekage," the Suna girl growls, unhitching her enormous fan from where it hangs on her back.

It's a half-truth, one that pings a deep recognition within Kakashi's gut, settling the anxiety there. His lungs expand and he breathes a little easier, a little surer, because he knows the endgame of this like he knows his own mottled soul.

But the Nine-Tails beats him to it, speaking with an odd mix of its rumble and the familiar squeak of Naruto. Its pupils look less thin, fattening out into sweet curves.  "No. He seeks Orochimaru."

Sasuke turns his head a little.

Tako's companion makes a thoughtful noise. "Orochimaru… Hey, is he the one who summoned the snake?"

Gai blinks. "Snake?"

"Yeah, there was a good-sized snake with three heads running around earlier, but I ate it."

"You… _ate_ Orochimaru's summons." Kakashi just wants to be sure, because if it's true, it's the best thing he's heard all day.

"Yep. I can open my mouth pretty wide." When the man grins, it's with an impossible number of sharp, serrated teeth. He punctuates his statement by patting his flat stomach. "Could've used some of that soy stuff I put on my ramen, but it wasn't bad."

Gaara's other friend, the portly boy with the painted face, squints. "Who are you again…?"

"Umino Shumokuzame," comes the cheerful reply. "No need to tell me your names—we won't be here long enough for me to remember them. But nice to meet you anyway."

The Nine-Tails lifts a hand to its forehead and huffs a few times through its nose. "Brat—Stay inside while the grown-ups talk."

A shiver rolls down its back as its legs jerk forward, and it stumbles, as if pushed by an invisible force. It bares its teeth, clenching hard, and air hisses between them. " _No_! Iruka-sensei needs me!"

"I'll lock you up forever, you little pest! Bury you in fire and burn you for centuries!" It cries.

"You dumb fox, let me out!" It's not the Nine-Tails. It's—  

"The great tailed beast, brought low by a child," Tako hums. Her voice is flat as a board, but amusement is plain in her eyes. "How intriguing."

"I would tear your throat out if I thought I could get away with it," the Nine-Tails snarls, but the words lack the usual ragged bite. Its teeth are softening, points slipping back into human molars. "You little—"

Sasuke watches, rapt.

"S-Shut up, you stupid…! I need to h-help _Iruka-sensei_!" With a loud groan, Naruto throws his head back and drags in a gulp of air as he surfaces, blue eyes wide and blinking. Exhaling a shuddery breath, he rolls his shoulders and hops from foot to foot, regaining the surety of his step, the proof that his body is back in his control. "That was weird. I didn't—"

He can see the moment Naruto sees it with his own eyes, cognizant of the discrepancy between his body and the sheer size of the wave. Ridiculous displays of power and physical prowess have always been Naruto's contribution to any situation, but to see an _actual_ demonstration of true might, of impossibility—and to associate it with the man he considers family…

Naruto drags in a shuddering breath, but the shock on his face takes a back seat to a creeping hurt. "He… He never told me…"    

"To be fair, I don't think he knew," Shumokuzame says with a sympathetic smile. "Not enough, at any rate. Hey, not to get off topic, but you must be pretty strong to be able to shut Kurama up. You got any parents, kiddo?"

"What?" Naruto sends a panicked glance at Kakashi. "Are you… are you a _pervert_?"

Shumokuzame grins. "No, no, nothing like that. See, kids are awesome, because they're resilient and they all have something to prove, which makes them especially good in battle. I'm gonna have an _army_ of them. So, someone like you—"

Tako lifts a brow. "No. This one is too loud."

"What did you say, lady?!" Naruto bristles, but his attention is quickly captured elsewhere. "What the hell is on your head?"

"Can we deal with this first?" Genma snaps, gesturing up at the wave, and Naruto jerks to attention. "How are we going to get around it? Kakashi, copied any rock wall jutsus lately?"

As a matter of fact… "Not nearly big enough to get to Iruka. I can get it level with the Spectator's Box, though, but the barrier's going to be a problem. If we can break through—"

"I can break through!" Naruto shouts, fists clenched and trembling with the need to fight, to run, to do _something_. Kakashi recognizes the signs; he's been there before. "I can do whatever it takes! If Iruka-sensei needs help, then it should be me."

"Kid, do you ever shut up?" The Suna girl sighs with a sniff. Gaara gives her a calm, but loaded look, and she backs immediately down.

"It's not a question of breaking through," Shumokuzame says, rocking on his heels, the strip of his hair swaying with the movement. "We can knock that thing over easy-peasy, but it's what Iruka's gonna do that we need to plan for."

"What he'll do?" Sasuke cocks his head to the side. "I'm assuming this whole display is in response to the invasion. He's going after the source of the problem: Orochimaru."

"Damn right! Because Iruka-sensei's _awesome_." Naruto pumps a fist into the air, grinning, and then looks around. "Wait, where _is_ Iruka-sensei, anyway?"

Shumokuzame squints. "Did they give Kurama a defective vessel?"

"Once the barrier is down, someone will need to get the Hokage out of there," Kakashi says.

"I'll do it!" Naruto chirps.

"Gai, you're the fastest among us." At this, Gai puffs up in pride, and Naruto grumbles mutinously. "As soon as it's down—"

"I will rush the Hokage to the hospital with great haste!"

"But what if Iruka brings the whole thing down on us?" Genma asks, gesturing in helpless frustration at the wave. "No point in saving _anyone_ if we're all gonna be under water anyway."

He's right. Saving the Hokage is moot if there's no village for him to protect when this is over. They need a solid plan, one that approaches the problem from multiple angles, with an emphasis on low casualties. He takes a moment to glance over his shoulder at the stands of the stadium—Sakura is still back there, and he curses himself for not waking her up, for not believing in her enough to make her part of this.

"You two," he barks at the Suna kids, who snap to attention. "Go with Genma and get as many civilians as you can to safety; backtrack and get out of the village if you have to. I don't care if you came here with the intent to invade Konoha—you're now in _our_ employ."

The girl exchanges a look with her painted companion. "We have orders—"

"And now you have new ones," Kakashi says slowly. "Genma, you're in charge of them. Consider it a mission. S Class."

"If I wanted to hang out with psychotic kids, I would've gone full jounin." Genma, somehow incomplete without the senbon, gives him a flat, unimpressed look before jumping off the edge of the wall, down into the city. At Gaara's nod, his companions follow him.

"Gai will rescue the Hokage, but we'll need to get through the barrier. You—Shumokuzame."

With the excitement of a genin on their first mission, the man salutes, practically vibrating where he stands. If this is any indication of what Naruto's going to be when he grows up, Kakashi's going to retire from shinobi life and take up pig farming. "Take out the guys who're holding it up, yeah? No problem."

"You going to eat them?" Sasuke sounds uninterested, but the gleam in his eyes belies him. He may be unusually broody and grim for his age, but he's still a boy where it counts.

Shumokuzame shrugs, grinning with all his teeth. "Hey, Tako, who does this kid remind you of?"

"You heard what Kurama called him," Tako remarks blandly. "Which means—"

"Which means—oh _man_!" Shumokuzame crows, cackling, and Sasuke startles out of his perpetual sulk to stare at the man with wide eyes. "This is great. Kid, you come with me and we'll see how you stack up against… well. Something tells me you'll give 'em a thrashing they'll never forget. Ever wanted to be a general?"

"Shumo," Tako barks, and her companion subsides with a giddy laugh, waving off Sasuke's concerned look. With a grunt, Shumokuzame tilts his head back, and as he does the circles on either side of his bare head blimp outward, elongating and flattening into… stalks. At the ends of them sit two bulbous things—eyes. They blink a few times, adjusting, and the lines of his jaw sink, dropping into his throat as the corners of his mouth melt down. When he opens his mouth, it looks like he really _could_ swallow a giant snake.

"What—" Sasuke hisses, and Shumokuzame grins at him. It's terrifying.

"Be quick about it. We're here for a reason, not to play," Tako says, giving Shumokuzame a flat look, and he snickers, shrugging.

"I make no promises; life's one, big, delicious game, after all, and I bet he'll agree. C'mon, kiddo." With a quick gesture at Sasuke, he bounds away to the spectator box.

Sasuke throws Kakashi an odd look, perhaps asking for permission, although Sasuke's never needed anyone to tell him what to do, or reminding himself to whom his loyalties lie. It wouldn't take much to lead the boy astray; Konoha's done nothing to endear itself to him. A shark man who knows something about Sasuke that Sasuke himself doesn't know? He'll worry at it like a dog with a bone, and would no doubt go so far as to abandon his village in hope of an answer.

Kakashi's done all he can. The only thing left is to trust him. "Go, Sasuke. Do us proud."

"Hm." Sasuke looks over his shoulder at Naruto and sneers. "Try not to screw up too badly, idiot."

"What did you—" But Sasuke leaps away, bounding after Shumokuzame, before Naruto can fully puff up in outrage.

Gai straightens his vest and salutes them. "May your feet be swift, my friends! We shall endure with flair!"

Sighing, Kakashi watches the man become a whirlwind, blasting his way after Sasuke with enough moxie to win the day all on his own. One of these days, Gai's _dynamic entry_ is going to get his green ass killed.

"And us?"

Gaara of the Sand steps forward, eyes as clear and bright as the day had been before the wave stretched out to cover the sky. Even under the shadow of water, the _love_ carved into his pale forehead is like a hot brand, too large, too obvious, and Kakashi has a hard time looking away from it.

"You'll—"

"We'll go up and snap Iruka-sensei out of it," Naruto shouts, throwing an arm around Gaara's thin shoulders, much to Gaara's visible confusion. He looks at the offending appendage as if he expects it to burst into flame. It's with an awkward air of acceptance that Gaara allows it, even leans into it.

"No." Kakashi looks at Gaara, who stares impassively back, the rings around his eyes inked there like a promise, the madness gone as if it had never been. "What was Sand's move in all this?"

Darting a glance at the hand dangling over his chest, Gaara murmurs, "... A power play. The Kazekage would never have attacked in such an organized fashion—he's not this clever."

Implying Sand would have attacked regardless. Interesting. "All right. So how will this play out? You know your people."

"No, I don't," Gaara says quietly, an old sorrow clinging to the words. "But if I were leading this coup, I would do as was done here today: go for the Hokage. Not just to remove the strongest power, but also the symbol of hope."

Naruto grits his teeth. "That's so cowardly."

Gaara says nothing.

"That's smart," Kakashi corrects. "Orochimaru is nothing if not that. Gaara, how many Sand nin are here?"

"Enough—only a select group was tasked with this mission. I was sent to… well. It is Sound that will prove the most annoying. If you are to focus on the man with the wave, we could hold them off."

"Sounds good," Kakashi agrees, peering over the edge into the branching streets below. There isn't a single visible person, but shadows can hide many things.

"But Iruka-sensei needs m—!" Naruto cries.

" _Naruto_." It isn't often that he needs to raise his voice like this, but it serves its purpose; Naruto shuts his trap with an audible click. "That's an order."

On his best day, Naruto's never followed an order, even when the success of his team depended on it. But this one will be obeyed—Naruto will do nothing to endanger the life of his beloved Iruka-sensei, and Kakashi is counting on it.

"You'd _better_ not let anything happen to him, sensei." The words are obviously being dragged out of somewhere deep and dark, and they sound like they hurt, but Naruto's bottom lip trembles for only a moment before it stretches out into his familiar grin. "They're not going to know what hit 'em. C'mon, Gaara. It's Gaara, right? I thought you were totally gonna kill me and Shikamaru on the stairs, but I guess you just don't know how to talk to people. That's okay! I can talk enough for the both of us. Is that thing on your head a tattoo? That's so cool. Iruka-sensei would kill me if I got a tattoo—or worse, never buy me ramen again—but he's a good guy…"

Wide-eyed and maybe a little bit in love, Gaara wordlessly follows Naruto down to the street below. Almost immediately, dozens of chakra signatures flare in the shadows, in the dark doorways of abandoned shops, and the air fills with the shouts and jeers of a hundred Narutos. Never know what hit 'em, indeed.

At his side, Tako regards the wall of water before them with an empty slate of an expression, chalk dust from a thousand previous erasings obscuring what has to be a maelstrom of emotion. Her skin goes as translucent as the wave before settling on a spotted black and gray pattern, her lips thin and a deep orange, eyes as blue and odd as before.

Too easy. For all her iron-clad control and the unforgiving manner in which she slaughtered the Sound nin, she sat back and did nothing when he took charge of this, let him order around her companion without so much as a whisper of dissent. The ease of it leaves a sour taste in the back of his mouth, crackling its way into his jaw.

"You don't care that Konoha will probably be destroyed, do you."

"No." She doesn't even turn to look at him; if it were anyone else, he'd call it cowardice, but that isn't it. She just doesn't care enough to make the effort. "It's one tiny village in one tiny county in one tiny continent—it won't be missed. I doubt its absence would even be noticed."

"Of course it would."

"I meant by those who actually matter." She cuts him a quick look. "I'm here to do my duty. Your village doesn't fall within that purview."

"What _is_ your duty, exactly?"

"To bring him home."

He stares at her, this woman, the _blood of his blood, born of his mother's sea_ , and exhales into the soft, worn fabric of his mask. "He is home."

For the first time since she dropped her mild-mannered guise, the corner of her mouth twitches, pulling up into a rictus of what must pass for amusement by her standards, and her skin bleeds to an almost merry yellow.

"No," she says, and bits and bobs of her hair slither down her neck, swirling across her belly, and then burst out to merge with the wave. The yellow whispers its way into flowing translucence, matching that of the wall of water; without any other fanfare, she rises slowly into the air, her hair billowing as if it were part of the rest of it, as if she were slowly floating from the depths up toward an invisible surface. When she revealed her true form the first time, she'd been a nightmare. Now, she's a dream. "He's really not."

With a huff, she drops to a crouch and then springs up, soaring into the air like a cannon ball, scaling the width of the wave as if it were a solid thing and disappearing around the back of it.

He tilts his head back and gazes up the tall stretch of the wave, hoping for a glimpse of the man atop it, but it's too close, too high. Instead of letting the frustration curl his fingers, he presses them into a familiar set of seals.

_Doton: Doryuuheki!_

The concrete splits beneath his feet and he jumps atop the wall as it careens upward, a solid ride that gives him a good view of the Spectator Box. A tough haze has overwhelmed it, four bodies bearing Sound colors at different points, each holding a wall of the barrier. Kakashi squints a little and sees Shumokuzame approach the largest of the group, waving a friendly greeting as he goes.

Behind him, mouth twisted sullenly, Sasuke waits.

Then, faster than Kakashi can see, Shumokuzame opens his mouth wide and lunges, sinking his teeth into the man, who gives a single, muffled screech before the top half of his body is torn away with a wet _ssshhrrtttcch_. His bottom half sways on trembling legs, exposed spine soaked with jagged muscle and broken nerves, a vulgar flag stuck in the ground, before it topples over, the remains of his intestines and bladder spilling onto the floor like an overturned basket of rotten fruit.  

"Jirobo!" One of them shouts, voice pitched high in shock and horror.

On the other side of the barrier, Sasuke looks on, jaw slack.

As if in answer, Shumokuzame tosses his prize into the air and catches it in his mouth, the skin of his throat bulging as he forces it down his gullet with little to no effort, slurping the bulging ribbon of intestine back like ramen noodles. He sighs and pats his flat belly, flashing a blood-stained grin; rivulets of the man's blood and ichor drip down his jaw, and he swipes them up with swift fingers, licking the gore away as if it were a delicacy.

"Jeez," Kakashi gasps, jumping from the wall to land in the Spectator Box. He keeps a decent distance, body thrumming in preparation for… for what? A fight? The idea is laughable.

There's a loud hum, a deep rumble that Kakashi can feel in his bones, and the barrier comes tumbling down.

"You fucking, bug-eyed _freak_!" One of the Sound, a woman, shouts and gets to her feet immediately. She takes something out from a pouch, a glint of metal in the light, and for a moment Kakashi thinks it's a knife or a shuriken. But she brings it to her lips and wiggles her fingers, filling the air with the sweet, airy notes of a melody.

Genjutsu. He closes the Sharingan the very instant the air begins to waver.

"'Freak'? That's not very nice," Shumokuzame says with a pout, and he holds out crimson-stained fingers to catch a glop of water as it separates from the swaying fin of his hair and hovers just above his palm. With a twitch, it flies for the woman, swirling around her flute and forcing itself into a finger hole.

She rears back, the flute falling from her fingers, and she scrabbles wildly at her throat. Her eyes bulge as she chokes, as Shumokuzame gets into every part of her, washes her life away. She'll be the tenth person to die like this today, and it's as horrific to watch as it had been with the first nine.

Except the water doesn't leak from her eyes and nose like Yakushi. It punches out of the pores in her skin as mist, coagulating back into the glob in midair while she collapses to the ground without so much as a gasp. Her skin ought to inflame from the trauma, but there's no life in her.

Sasuke stares down at her body, then back up at Kakashi, his eyes wide. Kakashi gives a faint shake of his head, a bit at a loss.

The other two Sound nin—a man with two heads and a man with six arms—take one look at their fallen comrades and tense as if to flee, but the glob of water splits in two and takes them both down, forcing their mouths open and pushing inside.

"'Freak,'" Shumokuzame echoes incredulously, flailing an arm in Kakashi's direction. Behind him, the Sound nin seize and jerk about as they slowly drown. "Did you hear what she said? Can you believe these kids today? No respect, I tell you. Honestly."

Kakashi cuts a quick, assessing glance over to where Orochimaru and the Hokage are locked in battle, except it looks like they're more interested in what's happening beyond their fight than anything else. Both have assumed stances that look almost perfunctory.

"Well, well," Orochimaru muses aloud, his mouth stretching into a wide grin. "Perhaps I won't need Sasuke-kun after all."

At that, Sasuke twitches.

Shumokuzame catches Kakashi's gaze and gestures to Orochimaru with an eye roll, like there's a joke there and he wants Kakashi in on it. It looks like there's a good punchline building, but Shumokuzame's attention is caught elsewhere, above them. Kakashi spins on his heel to see the massive crest of the wave pour into itself, the apex pushed lower and lower, rolling to a stop just above the floor as if it were a carpet laid out for the dainty shoes of a noble.

"Oh," Shumokuzame breathes, immediately dropping to one knee, chin on his chest, and Kakashi turns.

 _Oh_.

From the bowing crest flows a being that would steal the words of the most accomplished poet, would blind an artist with their own tears, wreathed in rushing, suspended water that takes the form of intricate armor, a cloak, a breastplate inlaid with gold, a plated pauldron curved over its left shoulder and arm, blending into its very skin that slides into shimmering, iridescent scales, trailing up a regal neck and sweetly hugging a gentle jaw.

No, not an it—not—  

The tanned skin is gone, now tinged green, blue, pink—nacre; the inside of the shell he once picked up on a sandy shore in Kirigakure. The hair he had felt tickle the skin of his throat years ago casts odd shadows as it billows in a static current, splashing up, spittle of blue-green-black-brown spray held in midair until it merges again with the whole. Across a kind nose, a gilded wound lies bare, a knife's slice of gold that shines.

Kakashi struggles to find enough air to fill his lungs, but he comes up lacking, chest cramping at the sight of familiar, unfamiliar blue eyes, shifting and undulating, catching a light that isn't there.

_Being someone else isn't going to be a huge change for me. You can be you and I'll never know._

"Iruka."

The word drops from his lips like a benediction, a prayer, a plea, the only thing heard above the roar of the wind atop the Monument.

Except it sparks no recognition in the man—the creature—that descends the wave as if he were simply walking down a staircase. Behind him walks Tako, strategically placed on his right side.

She catches his eye and her lips quirk, then she makes a noise low in her throat and jerks her head toward Iruka's left. Kakashi blinks. Is he meant to take the position opposite her and become part of the cavalcade?

Movement draws his attention and he watches helplessly as Shumokuzame strides over, slotting into position.

They stand tall, an odd and awe-inspiring trifecta, Iruka at the apex of the trio, and the air around them grows heavy with expectation and vague intent. Iruka's blue, fluid eyes cut a horizon through Kakashi to where Orochimaru waits. After a moment, Orochimaru abandons the Hokage altogether, walking toward them, a hungry shadow in his gaze.

Sasuke moves almost silently to stand next to Kakashi, a little closer than he would otherwise, his breath coming in harsh stops and drags.

Almost immediately, Gai sweeps in without so much as a sound or a glance in their direction, gathers the Sandaime in his arms, and bounds away. Kakashi's deep-seated loyalty to his Hokage can't even muster up the energy to be relieved—all his attention is on the tableau before him.

"My, my. Sarutobi-sensei never mentioned that Konoha was full of such interesting things," Orochimaru purrs. His long tongue slithers out to wet his lips. "Perhaps I was too hasty in leaving when I did if I had you to look forward to. Had I known, I would have waited."

In answer, Iruka glides forward to meet him, his two cohorts a few steps behind.

"Your power and skill are astounding. I can't detect the use of chakra at all. Is this all you?" Orochimaru gestures to the wave, genuine curiosity breaking the rasp of his voice.

When no answer is forthcoming, Orochimaru smiles and moves slowly, hands in plain sight, as disarming as he can possibly make himself.

"You're right. Why use words when so much more can be said with silence? I must confess, I've never seen anything like you—even I couldn't hope to control such a force. Not in this body. But you… oh, the things we could _do_ together. We could change the very course of history, you and I."

Orochimaru is the sort of monster found in children's stories—a shadowy figure with terrifying foibles, all whispery promises and sweet lies; the serpent of Konoha, whose loyalty to his home was as slippery as he was, longing for a power he couldn't name or hope to keep if he someday obtained it.

Kakashi can still remember the feel of his ANBU mask sliding across his forehead, split down the middle with an effortless swipe of a kunai, how the stench of blood and smoke clinging to Orochimaru's jounin vest irritated his nose, made his eyes water. How one look from those terrible eyes were enough to lock his muscles and stay his hand.

But now, facing off with what Iruka has become or perhaps always was, Orochimaru is nothing more than a kid in a costume, a plaintive little boy pretending to be someone deserving of the immortality he so craves.

"The things we could accomplish," Orochimaru breathes, stopping inches from Iruka, his sandaled feet brushing against Iruka's bare toes. "The things we could _share_. The world we could have."

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbles up in Kakashi's throat, and suddenly he gets it. As if he can hear Kakashi's thoughts, Shumokuzame cracks a tiny grin.

The punchline is Orochimaru.

It's the most hilarious joke Kakashi's ever heard.

The humor must be lost on Iruka, whose expression hasn't budged since his descent from the wave. He regards Orochimaru with a distant sort of attention, like he can't be bothered to care about the arrogance of the man who invaded his home and pitched such a deal to him.

Orochimaru's smile parts into a grin. "With your capacity for such stunning power, you no doubt have room enough for me, as well."

Orochimaru could dangle any deal he wanted, threaten the worst things he could think of—the Hokage's death, the destruction of Konoha, harm to Naruto—and it wouldn't matter. Iruka would kill himself first. Kakashi half-expects a loud, brazen refusal of the offer, followed by a rousing speech about the Will of Fire and then an appeal to Orochimaru's better humanity by way of an invitation to Ichiraku for a ramen dinner.

It never comes.

Instead, Iruka's head only tilts to the side ever so slightly, a dog-like gesture, hearing something interesting that no one else can detect, but his face remains utterly devoid of anything human, anything resembling the man he once was.

With a hiss, Orochimaru's head shoots out, neck stretching to impossible lengths, and he sinks elongated teeth into Iruka's neck.

Shit. _Shit_.

Sasuke sucks in a gasp, reflexively clapping a hand to his own neck.

Kakashi's fingers fly through the first set of seals to activate the Fuuja Houin, _hare snake horse ram bird tiger hare snake horse ram bird tiger_ , and he dips into his chakra reserves to gather as much as his body will allow. If he's fast enough, the curse might not take hold.

As he continues through the seals, he glances up. Behind Iruka, Shumokuzame looks at Tako and makes an exaggerated expression of confusion, jerking his head in silent question to where Orochimaru has his teeth locked into Iruka's skin. Tako shrugs a shoulder, bored.

_—ram bird tiger hare snake horse ram bird tiger hare snake horse ram bird—_

There's a loud, wet sound, a slurp, and Orochimaru lifts his head with a toothy grin, glancing up at Iruka, who—

Who stares straight ahead, unchanged.

Kakashi's fingers go still.

"Impossi—" The word breaks suddenly in Orochimaru's throat, a shriek scattering the sand in his rasp, and his long, twisting neck rears back, thrashing like a wounded snake. The long legs that walked by Kakashi once upon a time, graceful, quick things, falter and stumble and spill him to the floor, and Orochimaru lets out a piercing screech.

Kakashi has seen this—bodies swollen with their own trapped gases, grown slippery and putrid from exposure to the water. It's never a dignified corpse that is fished out from lakes and streams, but at least the poor bastards are usually dead a week by the time it happens.

Orochimaru screams, long and terrified, fingers scrabbling at his own skin and coming away with wet, gloppy pieces, saliva spilling down his front—no, not saliva. Water.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" Orochimaru howls, back bowing. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"

Gaunt cheeks inflate and push into fat, waxy strips of flesh that peel away, exposing discolored swathes of tissue, splotches of dark red marking his limbs like bullseyes. Orochimaru's thin form bloats, his already pallid skin rapidly growing paler to expose the arteries and veins beneath the surface, and the corners of his lips begin to split and crack, fault lines causing quakes in his contorting face. The air is rank with the smell of death.

Iruka exhales and the wave expands and contracts with him, and from where the water kisses the floor come a thousand little whispers, and Kakashi can't hold in a gasp at the sight of crabs and shrimp and tiny lobsters and fish and bug-like things he's never seen before scuttling like a miniature army for Orochimaru's thrashing form.

Orochimaru catches sight of them and his sunken, filmy eyes widen in horror as they draw near. His lips split further at the edges as he screams, "GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY—!"

He swipes at them with hands made clumsy by fingers that refuse to work and manages to bat a few away, but the swarm pays him no heed, crawling over him, covering him, filling the air with the sound of tearing flesh and fabric, of feasting, of screaming. Something splits with a wet rip, blood and fat erupting from the schism, and Kakashi watches helplessly as the first wave claws their way inside the rip, moving beneath what skin he can see. Orochimaru's screaming is muffled, growing fainter with every slow, dripping second that passes; his wide mouth full of spindly legs and tearing claws, his skin pulsing with moving bodies.

They're feasting on every part of Orochimaru—inside and out. Kakashi swallows down the sour taste of bile that crackles along his jaw and looks away. This is a little too grim, even by his standards.

Behind Iruka, Tako reaches into the low cut of her top and pulls out another skewer of dango, nibbling on it dispassionately.

Shumokuzame snorts. "I fucking knew it."

But Iruka… Iruka simply tilts his chin down a little to watch as his hoard picks Konoha's great enemy apart, his blank, blue eyes fixed on the writhing mass like it's a wrinkle in a shirt, a rip in the carpet. The ice there makes Kakashi's skin crawl, like he's the one being smothered and eaten to death by an army of bottom dwellers, helpless, exposed.

When all he can hear is the grating of shells, the click of claws, he tears his gaze away from Iruka and chances a look. There's nothing left of Orochimaru but wet, blood-stained bones. Picked clean.

It wasn't any more than what Orochimaru deserved, but it sits in Kakashi's gut like a shoddily-made kunai, too heavy and tearing at his insides.

Exhaling hard, Sasuke lifts his hand from his neck where the curse placed upon him weeks ago has no doubt been erased.

Iruka's chest rises and falls with a soft whoosh of air, and one by one the hoard turn from the remains and scuttle back to their master, their bellies full and their task complete. They crawl over Iruka's feet, over Tako and Shumokuzame, who pass the dango skewer back and forth while they wait; the scavengers merge back into the wave, swept away the current and disappearing into the depths.

All right. He came up here with a purpose. Kakashi takes a shuddering breath and stands tall, lifting his chin, facing the man head-on. "Iruka."

Not so much as a twitch.

"Iruka, you did it. You… stopped Orochimaru. The village—the Hokage—is safe," he says. "You can stop. It's done."

"He can't hear you." Finishing off the last of the dango, Tako tosses the skewer away. "I told you: his ears are filled only with the song of the sea."

"You said it needed to be drained from his ears," Kakashi grits out, fist clenching at his side. Rage simmers deep in his belly, something to focus on while he begins collecting chakra. A spark flares in the dark, followed by the rumble of coming thunder, and nostrils fill with rich, ominous petrichor.

"I did." Tako licks at her teeth absently and gives him a mild look. "I never said I would do it."

Lightning licks up his wrist, curves over his fingers, and the call of birds fills the air.

Her gaze drifts to Iruka, whose whole body is in a constant state of flow, every part of him shining and utterly _alive_. He cuts an undeniably striking figure. Attractive, yes—his face still looks relatively the same—but _powerful_. Kakashi knows of no one, shinobi or otherwise, who commands attention the way Iruka does right now. Even ignoring the massive, city-sized wave, Iruka is a god among mortals.

As soon as he thinks it, something slots into place—an irrefutable truth that steals his breath and makes the hair on his arms stand on end. The _raikiri_ extinguishes with a hiss.

The longer he keeps his eyes on Iruka, the more his vision swims and feathers at the edges, like looking at the sun. An ache between his brows makes itself known, stretching to the back of his skull until it's less of a throb and more of a drum strike, and he has to avert his gaze.

His tongue is thick, his lungs too big for his ribs, and he stares at his feet while the world shifts around him.

Through the haze and the nausea, Kakashi glances up through his lashes to meet the startlingly blue gaze of a man who is not a man. A man who is not the man he knows; has teased, has frustrated, has held. There is nothing of the child prankster in that flat stare, and the intelligent teacher is lost in the shine of glistening scales. He looks at Iruka now and can't find him, and it's too terrifying to bear.

Kakashi looks at Iruka now, and the after he had been hoping for is washed away. Like everything else in his life.

"My lord," Tako says quietly, chin dipping in deference. "We should go. Your presence is required; the Consultation has begun."

With one last long look at Kakashi, Iruka turns, his cloak flowing behind him, splashing Kakashi's cheeks and mask with the dregs of his dismissal. Shumokuzame bows his head as Iruka passes him, lifting it only when he turns to follow, and the three of them walk toward the wave.

"Don't." It struggles to find air, lost in the wet prison of his mask.

Iruka continues on, his back a straight, unforgiving wall, and his companions completely ignore him.

"Don't go."

If he leaves now, goes wherever "home" is, Kakashi knows Iruka will disappear from the world as if he had never been, and the ten-years old warmth that clings to his fingers will go with him.

"Don't go where I can't follow."

The hard line of Iruka's armored shoulders shudders.

Heart pounding like a war drum, Kakashi opens his mouth to let any of the words crowding on his tongue try again when the sound of pounding steps stops him. Displaced air hits his side as an orange-and-blue blur rushes past and launches itself into the air.

" _Iruka-sensei!_ "

Iruka turns slightly but isn't prepared for the impact, staggering back under the force of a body colliding with his own; the wave swells behind him as if it means to finally make good and drown the village. Iruka catches himself and moves to stand up straight, but he freezes as he registers the arms around his waist, the sobbing mess of a boy pressed against him.

"Iruka-sensei," Naruto croaks, burying his face into Iruka's chest, the water of Iruka's armor mixing with his tears. "Stop. This isn't you. It's not. It can't be!"

Tako whirls around, eyes flashing and skin bleeding to black, hand awash with water and lifting in preparation for a strike. Kakashi moves before he can think about it, in her space faster than he's ever been, clamping a hand around her wrist to stay the attack.

"You—" She snarls. Her irises fill with violent orange.

"Me," he agrees, jerking his grip on her hard and chancing a look over his shoulder. "Now watch."

Naruto sucks in a ragged breath. "This isn't what you want. It can't be. People… people are hurt down there. Dead. Entire houses were destroyed. These… these are people we know. This is our home, Iruka-sensei. This is your _home_."

Where it hangs in the air, suspended by the shock of such an unexpected attack, Iruka's hand begins to tremble.

"Y-You told that jerk Mizuki that I wasn't the demon fox, that I was Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha. Which means you're not—you're not _this_. The Iruka-sensei I know wouldn't try to hurt his home; he loves this place and everyone in it more than anything, and he's you. You're Umino Iruka-sensei of Konoha!"

The hold he has on Tako's wrist is little more than a formality, a symbolic gesture etched into the vice-like grip of his fingers, but it isn't until she blinks in surprise that he even notices. He meets her gaze and realizes he can't hear the roar of the wave.

Slowly, a trembling hand comes up to tenderly cup the back of Naruto's head.

A deafening silence has fallen like snow, soft and almost unnoticed, and he wants to lift his hand to catch it in his palm. Kakashi turns and spies the others—Gaara, his companions, Genma—watching the tableau of a little boy holding a veritable god in the circle of his arms. Gaara steps forward, a terrible, sympathetic sorrow etched into his features, and stares at Naruto with visible longing.

"Jeez," Genma whispers. "I can't… Jeez."

Kakashi inhales shakily and focuses on Iruka, who—

Who stares straight at Kakashi with eyes as dark as the night that crests over Hokage Mountain, lashes bejeweled with unshed tears.

He sucks in a breath. "You—"

The wave shivers once, a single ripple that traverses its entire body, and then it breaks, wild, free. It ought to wash the Spectator Box, the stadium, the _village_ away in its unrestrained course, but even as it bursts outward in all directions it flows in one direction: Iruka's.

"Look out!" Kakashi shouts, but it's too late. The water rears up like a horse throwing off its reins, and curves around and around and around, wrapping Iruka and Naruto in a swirling vase of immense power that spins too fast for Kakashi to see.

The column rises and rises, breaching the sky like it means to drown the stars, before dissipating entirely with the suddenness of a summer storm, leaving Iruka and Naruto clinging to each other, soaked and dripping with the remains.

Wide, confused eyes sweep across them, and Iruka drags in quick, shallow breaths, before his black eyes— _my eyes are black all the time_ —roll back in his head. His legs crumple inelegantly beneath him and immediately Kakashi is there to break his fall. Iruka's head lolls into the crook of his neck, and the air leaves Kakashi's lungs in one quiet rush. It's just as new and terrifying as it was all those years ago, the feel of Iruka pressed against him, the brush of Iruka's soaked hair over the exposed skin of his temple.

Just a moment longer. Just—

"... to a hospital! Kakashi-sensei! Are you listening to me, you jerk?! Sasuke, wake him up or something!"

Naruto's shrill shouting punches through the haze, and Kakashi jerks in surprise.

"Hospital, right." He coughs and turns to the rest of them. "Make sure our new friends don't do anything… stupid."

The painted boy from Suna gives Kakashi a flat stare. "And we're supposed to do that _how_ , exactly?"

He doesn't have time to hash out a plan; Genma's a decent strategist when he needs to be, and between them they have enough power to keep Tako and Shumokuzame on the ropes for a little while.

Naruto growls, shivering in the wind, water running down his face from his hair in rivulets. "Don't worry. We'll keep an eye on them."

Kakashi doesn't doubt it. He's never seen the boy look so angry.

Shifting Iruka into a more secure hold, he turns to head toward the hospital, but not before he overhears Shumokuzame's, "Well, shit. A complication. You love those."

Tako says nothing in reply, her attention on the hand with which Kakashi cradles Iruka. Something sparks there, an attempt to understand, and then the wrinkle between her brows smooths out. Cold, inhuman eyes burn murderous intent into his very bones.  

Kakashi, holding Iruka a little tighter, makes sure the grin that spreads across his face is every bit as shit-eating as can be seen through the mask.

Above them, an albatross screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! So, that happened.
> 
> I began formulating the two original characters introduced in Hadal (part 2) long before I even finished watching episode 68 of Naruto, never mind Shippuden. It’s a complete and utter coincidence that they share some traits with canon characters that were later introduced in the show (Tako means "octopus" and Shumokuzame means "hammerhead shark"); these traits were chosen for their connection to the sea and nothing else. (When I was conceptualizing Shumokuzame, it was around episode 64 and I was so proud of myself. "A guy who's also a shark! YES." And then a few episodes later Kisame popped on my screen and I was like, "OH _COME ON_.")
> 
> I know how some people get about original characters in fic, and I completely understand. I only ask that you give them a chance, especially since both are integral to the story (they’re not there to fuck up anyone’s ships, I promise). They are fully realized, three-dimensional characters, and I’m quite taken with their connection to Iruka and the expanded ‘verse I’m building.
> 
> We'll be back to our regularly-scheduled Iruka chapters here on out, with the exception of the occasional interlude that will give voice to other characters. And, more importantly, expect the Kakashi/Iruka aspect of the story to begin in the next chapter.
> 
> And if anyone's curious, here is the music I listened to on repeat while writing Hadal (parts 2 & 3):
> 
> \- [Conceptualizing Iruka's "yes" and transformation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAZEcg8NLtM)  
> \- [Witnessing the wave and Iruka's power](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXT72KR_9cI)  
> \- [Orochimaru's death (don't ask—i have no explanation for this one)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WH1Ma50QUk)  
> \- [Iruka and Naruto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pflu5sXcahM)


	7. Interlude: Sakura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For as long as she can remember, she has been a patch quilt, a stitched-together mess of scraps that make up her whole.

For as long as she can remember, she has been a patch quilt, a stitched-together mess of scraps that make up her whole—the wide-foreheaded know it all, the clanless interloper, the lovesick fool, the unreliable tagalong, the talentless failure. She is the product of parents who know nothing about what it means to be shinobi and an education that teaches nothing about what it means to be a person, and each views the other as something distasteful, anachronistic. She orbits both worlds without ever fully landing in either of them, suspended between them by a tenuous, zigzagged thread.

Twenty-three nights after the attack on Konoha, she gathers the scraps of her rage and slips away from the city proper, steals away into the trees. Her feet trample over familiar ground, grass that she ran over once in an attempt to impress her new teacher and the boy who never looked at her twice.

Three posts stand tall against the night, and each bears the brunt of her anger.

"I'm your student just as much as they are and you should have _trusted in me to do my duty_!"

She sinks ten shuriken—the same ones she's spent days sharpening to impossible sharpness—into the one on the left.

"I don't know why you're the special one—he was my teacher too! It should have been _me_ fighting alongside you!"

The one on the right gets kunai to the groin, heart, and head.

"But you…"

She gets to her feet unsteadily and faces the middle post.

" _You_."

Shadows shift over the lines in its face and it stares at her, impassive, flat, as if she's not worth the time or effort to respond. She clenches her teeth under its scrutiny, at the way it looks at her. Like she's no one. Like she's nothing. Like she's an ugly quilt to be tossed away.

"You're wrong. I _am_ someone."

Unreliable tagalong.

"I may not be your friend."

Talentless failure.

"And I know I'll never be your girlfriend or your wife."

Lovesick fool.

"But I _am_ your teammate and you _will_ respect me for it!"

She won't have to cut that thread after all.

It snaps on its own.

The middle post takes her punches and kicks until her knuckles split and her heels bleed and the wood splinters beneath the assault.

Knees buckling, she spills to the ground and tilts her head back, dragging in barbed breath after breath, each one like the precise swipe of a blade over the soft inside of her throat. Her nose burns and her eyes grow hot, fire prickling at the corners, and she bites down her tears and lets the fabric-soft swell of rage bolster her.

She'll slice right through the jagged seams of herself and rearrange her pieces into a better fit, matching edge to edge in order to find some semblance of symmetry. Maybe then her teammates will see her as useful instead of a burden, something other than an unwanted and ugly gift to be thrown over old bedspreads and the backs of sofas.

Maybe then, they'd see what she's capable of.

"Are you finished?"

Exhaling in a low, shuddering whoosh, Sakura turns her head, the last of her last kunai gripped tight and ready to fly, and freezes.

When she was young, her father used to tell her stories when her mother wasn't listening, tales of monsters that lurk in the night and hunt little girls who don't do what they're told. _There are things in this world even the smartest scholars don't understand and the bravest, strongest shinobi can't kill._ And she always scoffed, because there was nothing a shinobi couldn't handle and someday she would prove it, but the bravado she had shown her father sticks in her throat now like sap, hardening until she can't swallow or breathe around it.

There's a swathe of darkness stretched over the line of trees that seems to vibrate thoughtfully for a moment before growing still, and then something melts out of it, a liquid shadow from which an entire person ripples into the world.

It walks—no, it _glides_ —as if it never had to learn how, every step precise and firm, and yet so light that the grass barely whispers or bends to it.

No, not it.

 _Her_.

Sakura's fingers fumble with the kunai, slick with sweat, before getting a good grip, and she releases it with so much exertion that the force of it makes her lose her balance and knocks her to her stomach. She stays on the ground, watches the blade glint in the light as it flies for its target, and holds her breath as it strikes true.

Sharp, terrible eyes go flat as the woman reaches up and pulls the kunai from her neck; something that isn't blood splashes as the blade slides free.

"You're finished."

If Naruto heard those words, he would get to his feet and fight until he were dead. If Sasuke heard them, he would get to his feet and sneer that she was making a mistake by underestimating him.

If Sakura is anything, it's realistic, so she gets to her feet, the sad scraps of her, and looks the woman in the eye. She says, "I am."

She is finished.

The woman looks at the kunai for a long moment, mouth a flat line, and then tosses it back with a flick of her wrist; it lands with a soft thud a few inches away from Sakura.

"That was meant to be killing blow," the woman says, and the bone-white of her skin looks shimmery for a moment, almost slick. "Appearing harmless but quick to strike. A surprise. Well done, little barracuda."

It twists like a pinch. Sakura clasps her hands together behind her back so she doesn't try and throw a punch. "You don't have to try and make me feel better. Just—just get it over with."

A whisper of sound, like bubbles rising from somewhere dark and cold, and the woman is in Sakura's space so quickly that Sakura shrieks and stumbles backwards, but a tight grip around Sakura's wrist prevents her from going far. Hair erupts around them, billowing and swaying like Ino's hair does when they jump into the river during the hottest days of summer, and then the color leaches from it. The moonlight ripples through the strands, eight of them, like arms.

And not a single ounce of chakra is spent.

"Allow me to disabuse you of the notion that I say things I don't mean," the woman says flatly. She releases Sakura's wrist and steps back, the watery arms of her hair moving gently with her, effortlessly graceful in every twitch and movement of her body. It would take Sakura years to learn her own body so well.

The light catches the woman's jaw, the edge of her ear, and recognition sparks in Sakura's brain. "You—I saw you that day, at the stadium! You looked different, but… it was you, right? You talked to Naruto!"

The woman blinks. "Very astute."

"It was you, then. T-The wave. They said… Ibiki-sensei said they captured you," Sakura says dumbly, a fine trembling in her hands.

Over the last couple of weeks, Ibiki-sensei personally made the rounds, visiting each home, giving out food and supplies like a peace offering. He'd been a giant, hulking shadow in her doorway a few days ago, pressing a basket of fruit into her mother's arms. _Haruno-san, the outsiders have been subdued and are in our custody. You've no cause to worry. If you would like to contribute to the relief effort, you will find a list of duties our jounin could use help with. Otherwise, you and your family should go about your lives. The perpetrators are not going anywhere._

"Ah, yes. _Morino Ibiki_." The woman draws out his name as if tasting each syllable, her lashes dipping, and if she were anyone else, anyone less terrifying, there would be a slow smile curving her lips. Sakura's mother gets that look every year on her anniversary, and the next day Sakura's father walks around in a daze.

Sakura's cheeks burn. "He said you were locked up!"

"Do you think your walls can hold me?" Coming from the strongest and most cunning ninja, it would be smug; the woman just looks bored, as if it were a cold fact, an irrefutable truth. Maybe it is.

Holding her wrist for no other reason than to feel the reassuring shift of her own bones beneath the skin, Sakura stares at the woman. "Are you… shinobi?"

"No." It sounds like _thank god._

"Then what are you?" With every passing moment she grows surer that this woman isn't here to take her life, but her true purpose remains to be seen. "Why are you… here?"

"I was on my way to visit an old friend, but I decided to simply take a walk through this—" The woman's face twists in a grimace. "—lovely village before I did."   

Lovely village. Surely she can't mean _this_ one, with its dirt streets turned to deep, sucking mud, its houses splintering from soaked wood, bloated bodies buried in holes that fill with runoff and slimy strands of strange weeds. The trees are still green, the people are as hardy as ever, but pretty Konoha was never meant to know the touch of the sea, never mind its entire embrace.

"A walk," Sakura echoes. "Do you really expect me to believe that?"

"No, I don't." The woman doesn't seem very concerned about it. "Where is the rest of your school?"

Sakura blinks. "My what?"

"I was under the impression that shinobi children operate in groups," the woman clarifies with only a little scorn. "Where is yours?"

"Why?" Her eyes dart to the tree line. It's too far away for her to make a quick escape. "What do you want with them?"

The look the woman gives her in reply—for either the assumption that Sakura could somehow get away or for thinking that this was about Naruto and Sasuke, she doesn't know—could flay someone. "Less than nothing."

"Well, I don't know what you want me to tell you. I haven't seen them much, not after… you know. What happened at the Exam." Sakura shrugs.

"You're angry with them."

"N-No."

"Yes."

Sakura glances at the three posts and shrugs again. No sense in denying it. "They left me."

The woman cocks her head. "Left you?"

"The village was under attack and it's my job as a shinobi to defend it. I took the same classes as they did. I passed almost every test, the same ones they took. I had every right to be there with them, even if it meant my death. That was my choice, and they took it from me. They left me behind. I think they always will."

The hard light in the woman's gaze doesn't soften even a little at the admission, but if Sakura didn't know any better she'd say understanding glittered there.

"I don't have the skills or talent to keep up with them." It's the thread that stitches her together, the thick tripwire that suspends her. The ugly truth of her life, laid bare to a stranger.

"Oh?"

"If what happened at the Exam happens again… I wouldn't be able do anything, even if I wanted to. They won't let me stand with them and on my own I'm not enough… What kind of shinobi does that make me?"

"A terrible one."

Sakura chokes on a laugh. "I guess so."

"You say you don't have the skills." The woman cocks her head to the side, something sly pulling at the corner of her mouth.

"I know I don't have the skills," Sakura says, and she thinks of the tricks Kakashi-sensei used against her that first morning, baring her heart and her stupid, stupid crush to the world, turning it on her in the worst way. Obvious exploitation, and she didn't see right through the ruse. Any shinobi, even genin, should have known. "Naruto went to train with someone else and Kakashi-sensei took Sasuke-kun somewhere, and I…"

Was left behind.

The woman tilts her head, eyes slitted thoughtfully, the light catching her odd, rectangular pupils. "Kakashi-sensei… the man with the mask. _He_ is your mentor? Or was, rather?"

Biting down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling, Sakura nods her head and averts her gaze. It's the admission of her own refusal to see the truth, the confession that Kakashi was in the right that day in the stadium when he had the chance to wake her up and didn't. The truth that the uneven scraps of her can't be stitched any other way.

"Interesting."

Sakura looks up. "Is it?"

The woman's face is a blank slate, but there's something there fighting to be seen, a shadow in her eyes that threatens to spill over her cheeks and lips. A quiet, simmering beast is hidden, and Sakura doesn't want to know what will happen should it be released. "That he would let someone with such potential go so easily? Yes."

"He did the best he could," Sakura says.

"Or the best he wanted to." It's a pretty murmur, not unlike the one that brushes against the back of her mind when she lies awake at night and wonders why she isn't good enough. But this isn't in the safety of her own head, not her inner self with its voice pitched low in the dark. The woman moves, a slow turn around Sakura's prone form. "You were entrusted to him for his guidance and he abandoned you in favor of a better prospect."

She wants to listen, to come right out and agree—yes, he didn't do the job he was given, refused to divide and devote himself to _both_ Sakura and Sasuke—but a small part of her rushes to barricade him from her anger.   

"I think he just… expected more," Sakura whispers, scratching uneasily at her arm. "And I'm not more."

"You're not?"

"No."

"Do you want to be?"

The moonlight casts the woman in shadow, her hair writhing around her as if alive, but her eyes—her terrible eyes—land upon Sakura with the surety of a punch, the slice of a blade. They are the eyes of the things that lurk in the shadows and hunt littler ones, that exist in worlds beyond anything Sakura can imagine. This isn't a humble civilian or elite warrior.

_There are things in this world even the smartest scholars don't understand and the bravest, strongest shinobi can't kill._

This is the needle that controls the thread.

"I can make you more," the woman says, low, intense, a contract being drawn up in the space between them.

Sakura sucks in a breath. "Why? Is… is something coming?"

Red lips bleed to almost black, parting around perfect teeth that glint in the moonlight like tombstones, one for every kill. "Something is always coming. It is the way of the world, to be made and destroyed and remade, but it isn't time for the world to meet its end. Not yet."

"We—Shinobi can save the world," Sakura whispers, but it feels forced, hollow. "Shinobi have always saved it."

"It wasn't the power of shinobi that stayed the hand of Orochimaru, and it will not be shinobi who douse the coming Flame. Umino Iruka is all that stands between this world and its destruction—but if he faces it alone, he will lose."

There is nothing of the woman's earlier coyness, her admission through omission—what she's saying now is the absolute truth. Something is coming for Konoha, for the world, and shinobi will be powerless against it.

"But, Iruka-sensei is a chuunin. He's shinobi," Sakura breathes.

The woman's mouth tilts. "No. He's not."

An elegant hand lifts, a pale flash of brightness in the night, and one of the eight tendrils that billows up from the bald curve of her head curves down, wrapping itself lovingly around her arm, her wrist, before swirling into a happy coil of water just above her palm.

"And neither would you be."

Sakura stares at the bulb of water as it grows fat and then contracts, slave to a current she can't see. It pushes forward, little licks of it cresting and then being subsumed back into the whole. Like a wave.

Like _the_ wave.

As if sensing Sakura's realization, the woman inclines her head. "You think yourself so small and weak, but what will you be once I pour the sea into you? Could you allow their brand on you to be washed away in order to fulfill a greater purpose, to become something they will talk about for years to come? What will your Kakashi-sensei think when he bears witness to what you are capable of? Or your teammates? The vessel will tremble and the Uchiha will tear his red eyes from the hollows in his skull, and neither will be worthy of you. Because I promise you, little barracuda, you will be unlike anything they've ever seen. But is that a fair trade? Is it enough to tempt you into throwing off the yoke of your silly, little _nindo_?"

Twenty-three days ago, her home was attacked in the worst way, and it wasn't the elite soldier or the strongest of a dead clan or a supernaturally lucky dead-last that saved them all. It was an otherwise ordinary man with an extraordinary secret beneath his skin.

_There are things in this world even the bravest, strongest shinobi can't kill._

"Is this…" Sakura swallows, gathers the jagged shards of her courage, feels them slice into the scraps, her bravado fraying. "Is this just to make Kakashi-sensei mad?"

"Only a very little."

"Then why—"

"I remember." The woman's fingers fan out. "I remember what it is to be inadequate. What it is to be human."

A gasp punches past her teeth at the feel of _smoothwetcold_ slinking around the back of her neck, and she startles as the globule of water—now stretched out, serpentine—weaves rings of dancing light in the air around her. She reaches out to touch it, and it shivers and coils about her fingers as if begging for attention. This could be her. This could be the new thread that stitches her together, weaves itself through the scraps of her and creates something better.

"Your school felt no guilt in leaving you behind. It's only fair that you have the opportunity to do the same."

She wants it. She wants it like her body wants air, her belly craves food, her brain demands knowledge. Her blood runs too hot in her arteries, and the heart that pumps it is a machine manufacturing fire; it begs for a resolution, to be something else—to be driven by the power of a current, the weight of water.

What is _shinobi_ , really? What actually binds her to it? She wasn't good enough by their centuries-old standards—why can't she be beholden to another set? How is it that she's accepted giving her life to everyone but herself?

The water pauses, shivers, and then suddenly drops to the ground. It ought to soak into the grass, disappear, but it rears up and rejoins its brethren on top of the woman's head.

Gaze on the trees, the woman tilts her chin and blinks slowly, a thoughtful tug to her mouth. "Perhaps another night."

"I—what—"

"Think on it in the interim."

Sakura shakes her head. She's pulled tight, threadbare. "No, I was ready! I'm ready!"

"Another night," the woman says firmly.

The bridge of her nose stings, burns, and Sakura pinches her mouth shut to prevent the scream that's rising in her throat from getting out. Somehow, this hurts worse than it did to wake up next to Ino and Shikamaru, to learn days later that Naruto and Sasuke had been in the thick of it and managed just fine without her. She doesn't know this woman, but she knows the value of her offer, and it's even prettier now that it's just out of reach.

"You were supposed to be different," she whispers, then jerks in surprise at the palm that cups her jaw. Sakura's head is tilted back and she's unable to look away from the too-bright, shifting blue of the woman's gaze, her rectangular pupils a void that pulls her in and drags her down into a darkness that is home to terrible things. A sharp scent invades her nose, settles on her tongue; salt.

"An idiot I know believes that children all have something to prove," the woman says almost gently. Almost. "It pains me to admit that he may be right. I will come for you again, and if your mind is unchanged then we will begin. But before the _yes_ leaves your tongue, be sure of it. Once you say it, you will belong to the land no longer."

She has no doubt that the woman could crush her skull without a thought, but Sakura closes her eyes, never so safe in someone else's hands. "How will I find you? I don't even know your name."

"And I don't know yours. Or perhaps I do," the woman says, then gives her a slow once-over. " _Barracuda_."

"W-What _is_ a barracuda?" Sakura looks up, eyes wide, but the woman grants her only a small, genuinely amused flash of white teeth, before rippling entirely out of sight and taking her kind touch with her.

The breeze rustles her tunic, brushes up against her bare arms, but Sakura can't feel it. Her heart pounds like a war drum and her fingers clench and unclench, trembling. In her veins rushes something hot and inadequate, _human_ , and she feels…

She feels...

"Sakura."

Startled, she turns as Sasuke stalks out of the woods with nothing of the woman's grace, his mouth soft with displeasure but his eyes hard, all his considerable focus on her. The moonlight catches on the blood red of his Sharingan—activated, as if he had meant to fight for her.

Half an hour ago, it would have made her melt inside, would have given her hope, but now…

_The Uchiha will tear his red eyes from the hollows in his skull, and will not be worthy of you._

"I saw her… She said something to you. What did she say?"

_You will be unlike anything they've ever seen._

Her hand slowly lifts to her jaw where the woman with the sea in her hair had touched her and offered her the means to stitch herself into something new, and doesn't know how to answer.

"Sakura?"

_Barracuda._

Haltingly, Sasuke steps forward and jerks his head back toward the village. He wears his awkwardness and discomfort like an old quilt, to be thrown off whenever he can manage it. "Come on. I'll walk you home."

_… so small and weak, but what will you be once I pour the sea into you?_

Swallowing, Sakura shakes her head. "Thanks, Sasuke-kun, but I'll walk myself home tonight."

When the woman finds her again, another night, one without interruptions, the yes on Sakura's tongue will be stitched with the thread of a new kind of resolve.

She will not be tossed away again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sakura seems to be the fandom punching bag, which makes me sad—I love that kid. I relate to her in a lot of ways.
> 
> She has a big role to play in this. I can't wait for her to dive in (pun intended).


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